Before delving into this latest piece to be found on the STAAD fiction site, let me proffer a more honest answer to the question.
How does it feel to be a scientologist?
Superior — after all nobody else has the “tech” of life, they are all ignorant,misinformed or both
Certain — we know the answer to everything, all that is needed is to “do what Ron says.”
Controlled — though they would categorize this as “dedicated” or “on purpose”. But bottom line, every scientologists does what is good for scientology. Period.
John Logothetis expounds with the usual scientology “talking points” — all to create the impression that scientologists are “free thinkers”.
He poses this question:
When I was 10 years old, I remember thinking: “God, why are there so many rules for so many things? Why is it I HAVE to act a certain way that doesn’t seem to fit who I am? Why is it my parents fight? Why do other people fight? Why are there wars and why can’t people just be happy?!”
He goes on to answer himself by saying he read the bible cover to cover and how wonderful it is, “but it didn’t answer a whole lot of my questions.”
Then he looked through his mother’s psychology textbooks and “literally had NO IDEA what they were talking about—regarding anything.” It’s just not proper as a good scientolgist to say anything positive about any subject that begins with psych-…
Then he found Dianetics and he read that and it was amazing. And then he says “the one HUGE thing that Dianetics and Scientology did for me is liberated me from having all those questions that I thought would never be answered”.
This is the rub with scientology. It claims to have the answers to EVERYTHING.
And he then proceeds with the big lie — the Orwellian “War is Peace” that is the mantra of scientology: “It was all so practical and did not demand that I believe in any certain thing or act any certain way… Scientology has no dogma. It does not demand of you that you be or believe anything at all.”
Except, anyone who is a scientologist MUST believe a LOT of things. In fact, there is a scientology rule for every situation in life. You are NOT in fact free to disagree or reject or question any teaching of scientology. Quite the contrary. You must accept it as written. Other ideas or thoughts are decidedly NOT welcome. It is Hubbard’s way or the highway. Have you ever read Hubbard’s laws in Keeping Scientology Working John?
And he then goes on:
“Scientology and Scientologists never demanded anything of me.”
Really John?
They never demanded any money? No participation in any events? No application of “standard tech”? No “don’t spread entheta”? No “nattering”? No associating with anyone declared SP? No reading the media? No dilettantism?
See how much you get to “make up your own mind and think for yourself” if you say something they don’t like.
You could run a little experiment. Try strolling into your local org and saying “I am concerned David Miscavige is physically assaulting his staff.” See how much freedom of thought you are able to exert.
This is the same guy who tried the old “we welcome all religions” pitch in March of this year on this same STAAD blog. At that time he wrote: “It’s not dogmatic (meaning it doesn’t tell you that you must believe this or that to be one of ‘us’).” Further demonstrating his ignorance he stated “Scientology is all-denominational. That means anyone from any denomination is welcome in Scientology. No strings attached.”
And we all know this isn’t true either. It’s a public “line” to try to make scientology seem normal. The real truth was confessed to the IRS: scientology “is a very exact faith, and a fundamental doctrine of the religion is that its religious services must be orthodox. This doctrine holds that spiritual salvation can be obtained it, and only if, the path to salvation outlined in the Scripture’s religious technology is followed without deviation.”
But then again that’s another notable fact about scientology. The truth is VERY malleable. It all depends on who it is being told to.
Hubbard even coined a term for this: “Acceptable truth.”
Hubbard in many ways created in the real world what George Orwell contemplated in his terrifying 1984 and Animal Farm.
How does it feel to NOT be a Scientologist anymore?
One word:
Liberating.
-from a former Scientologist of 35+ years
Find out more at mikerindersblog.org
Guess I get no statpush call. I feel ALMOST insulted.
So this is what Scientology was for me in the beginning:
At first I felt empowered by what I felt was the truth revealed (tech). Then I felt superior for using the tech. Then I felt trapped by the tech (try working out of the Dynamics and still try to leave the org!… it’s a trap) Then I felt betrayed as none of the tech actually worked on anyone, that I knew of, including OTs.😒
So I finished my contract at LAO and walked away from the BS slowly.💩
I attended a seminar by Mayo and that made my break mutually agreed on and permanent. My name is on a piece of Goldenrod paper…😁
And I have been free of Scn’s grip ever since! 🎉🎆
Yeah you can fantasize about sex with children but you cannot masturbate..it all makes sense….. not!
Maybe they should ask the staff who are living behind razor fences , who get their mail read, not allowed a phone, paid pennies, can’t masturbate, are watched 24/7 working like dogs. … ask THEM what it’s like being a Scientologist.
I don’t think this bozo is listening to what he’s saying… or maybe his mind is mush at this point.
Can’t masturbate? F*ck that!
The glaring flaw in Scientology is that it claims to have all the answers and a simple exercise in logic proves that’s impossible. It’s only logical that if you believe you have found all the answers then you cease to question. There can be no free thought without the desire and ability to question. For example : What color is the sky ? Simple Answer : blue. Seemingly a Scientologist would be fully satisfied with that answer. Though a true free thinker would begin a new series of questions such as what shade of blue is it ? What conditions affect the intensity ,depth and duration of the color blue and on and on the questions go. For one answer must and will always lead to more complex questions regarding the original question and answer.
An open mind will always seek to expand never taking a single answer as the only ultimate answer. Life is a continuous journey of what if’s. Imagine if Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, DaVinci, Columbus or Von Braun had ceased to question being completely satisfied with the answers of their day. Man would never have circumnavigated the globe, sought the stars,walked on the moon etc.etc.
Simple ,stagnant answers are for simple minds and simple minds have never created better worlds or realities because they have ceased to imagine them. .
☝ This.
Scientology is psychological reductivism for the intellectually lazy.
Life’s complexities are reduced to heuristic thought-stoppers.
Even when rooted in truth, their value as absolutes are limited.
There are no shades of grey in scientology. No appreciation for nuance.
The only way to advance is by denying logic.
Each EP is an unsupported proposition – from Life Repair, all the way up to OTVIII.
Any reasoned evaluation would expose serious logical fallacies in Hubbard’s output and diminish the therapeutic value of the entire program.
John Logothetis gushed, “the one HUGE thing that Dianetics and Scientology did for me is liberated me from having all those questions that I thought would never be answered”. Like why as a middle aged man, little 7 year old girls run away upset when I try to passionately kiss them. That is also answered in Dianetics.
A 10-year old likely wouldn’t understand postgrad psychology textbooks, but intro to psych? Sure, why not. I used to read my mom’s lower level biology textbooks. I read the Bible cover to cover around then too (as a work of iffy history, literature, and philosophy, as I was taught to by my family.) I memorized A Midsummer Night’s Dream at that age. That’s also about when I came upon Dianetics and read it out of curiosity, and realized it was stupid. Badly written, with bad ideas — total gobbledygook.
This isn’t bragging. 10-year olds are perfectly capable of reading and understanding at high levels. Their emotional regulation isn’t great, but their intellect is. 10-year olds think critically and creatively when they’re both taught and allowed to. This is not some “adults in small bodies” bullshit. Remember, a child is the one who noticed the emperor had no clothes.
But this guy’s lying. He’s a Scientologist; it’s what they do.
Some of us kids WERE up to that level. I understood the form of the atom from the time I was five, from when my electronics tech dad taught my mom about it within my hearing. From the time I could read, I read science book after science book and did science experiments.
By the time I was in 4-6 grade I had figured out that reading was the fastest learning method and started testing my classmates learning rates to see how much faster they would be able to learn if allowed to read at their own pace instead of listening to the teacher read the textbook out loud. I myself could have graduated by the time I was 12 if I had the proper support of the adults surrounding my education.
I had already started what I think of as my life’s work phase 1, a cognitive scale/student classification system based on student’s learning rate rather than “IQ” which I felt to be a nebulous term and measurement.
I had read at least one version of the Bible by the time I was 10, read another at age 11 at which point I was reading at the college level. By the time I hit age 13 I was running with the big boys. While the other kiddies were concentrating hard on their dioramas, I was combining the thought of John Locke and Alfred Korzybski.
The public school system where I went held very little for a kid like me. They lacked the facilities, they lacked the interest to deal with a kid like me. My parents were crazy and did almost nothing to support me in my educational or vocational goals. I had to develop my own curriculum so I could get full intellectual engagement at some point during the day.
My own education included learning basic Latin and Greek, studies in the philosophy of science, Freud, Jung, Einstein, John A Wheeler, Descarte, Lucretius, Plato – things that I felt were necessary for a young aspiring lead research scientist that weren’t offered at my school, that I could sink my intellectual teeth into after a long day of listening to teacher after teacher read their textbook out loud at a tiny fraction of my native learning speed.
When L Ron Hubbard said in one of the Study Tapes something like “They don’t know how to teach the smart kids!” (I think he was talking about Jack Parsons) I was all “Amen!” and I felt I should hear the rest of what Hubbard had to say.
What I mostly lacked as a child was experience and personal agency. I had to rely on adults who did not have my best interests in mind, both at home and at school.
Gene left us:
“L Ron Hubbard said in one of the Study Tapes something like “They don’t know how to teach the smart kids!” (I think he was talking about Jack Parsons) ”
Ain’t that the truth! Hubbard, though demonstrably brilliant as a hypnotist and conman, knew NOTHING about actually learning. His “study tech” CRIPPLED good students like thee and me. AFAICT, it all was his attempt to make up for his blowing off school, a short cut to actually LEARN science, math philosophy, and all the other subjects he was too disinterested in to actually do any work. By MAGIC, looking up all the words of a subject was going to give him an understanding of it. Sadly, magic doesn’t work in the real world, or he would have BEEN the nuclear physicist, MD or psychiatrist he played at being at various times in his life. Maybe if he’d UNDERSTOOD the ideas of humanity, empathy , and the other sociable activities he’d have been as GOOD a man as he pretended to be. He seemed deathly afraid of honest emotions and interdependence, preferring to rape everyone he could for as much as he could.
One of the most unbelievable forms of fiction is the type of “conversion” experience that blogger John is trying to peddle here:
“Oh, I was a lost, brothers and sisters. I read the Bible but the Spirit cometh not upon me.
So then I turned to psychology. But psychs could not answer my life questions. No siree!
Until I found ‘the modern science of mental’ and cognited that every word was true! Praise be to Elron”
This scenario is ludicrous! Sure, there are the initiated, brainwashed (or whatever term you prefer) who will swear that every word of dianutics is profound, inspirational and true. But it simply does not work the other way around: No one with even minimal intellectual firepower will EVER take a sober-minded look at dianutics and say, “Wow. This is it. I need to join these folks.”
WERE that possible “Ron” would have found respect and recognition outside of the cult. “Fellow” scientists would approvingly quote him and credit him for at least some of his “science.” Religious leaders, while recognizing their differences with him, would learn a thing or two from him and quote it as inspirational. Health science practitioners would pay attention to some of his methods instead of deriding them as total quackery. Fellow writers would acknowledge him. At the very least, public libraries would not send his “works” straight to the dumpster.
Sure, once you’re in a cult you’ll believe and affirm anything its founder says, no matter how illogical, strange or even disturbing. But someone recognizing “Ron’s” wisdom, getting great results from trying it and then maybe joining up or maybe not (after all, it’s totally up to you), now THAT is pure fiction. OR really, a big whopping lie!
Todd, there HAVE been folks who honestly thought the way that “success story”™ reads. Sadly, they discover all too quickly that Tubby’s proclamations are all vaporware, with no real substance to them. After that point, it was attesting to ‘clear’ in my case, to maintain their activities scientology-wise, they have to LIE, particularly to themselves and say things are still GREAT as their lives crumble into dust around them. As a scientologist AND newly-minted ‘clear’, I felt AWFUL; my girlfriend dumped me, I couldn’t get approval to take a vacation home; had no money to do it anyway. And there was nothing the org could/would do to help me, not even a sympathetic ear, since I was suddenly a “downstat” for allowing myself to get a bit depressed. The only thing they could do was unceremoniously toss me in the RPF, as if continual degradation was going to make me happy. Strangely enough, it did work, as what they thought as “hard labor” was easy for a guy in my shape and past occupations, and I could run rings around TPTB, as fat as they were. After awhile I correctly stated “This is ridiculous”(as in, not doing anything) and they fairly quickly showed me the door, kicking me out of Flag, and I thought scientology. Suddenly, I was FREE! and re-established what my life could, SHOULD have been. 39 years later, I’m still finding false data from Tubby’s teachings that I have to unravel and banish, and having a bit of Schadenfreude as I watch DM dismantle what had seemed to be working.
How does it feel to be a scientologist?
For the first few weeks, you feel quite good honestly. You are love bombed and told you will get everything that was ever wrong in your life handled. You are made to believe that you are the creme de la creme.
Then niggling doubts start to creep in. if you mention one of them, you are asked what it is that YOU did that was wrong. Your self-doubt begins. You “understand” that it is your fault and your inability to properly understand what is right in front of your face that makes you the bad guy. You begin to feel a bit trapped and wonder if you made the right choice.
If you express those feelings to anyone, you are either sent to ethics or told it is your case and that you need to get that handled. So you pay more money to get rid of the doubts. But…the doubts don’t go away.
So you start to pretend that it’s all okay, while you keep hoping that on the next level you will get what everyone else who is in scientology apparently already has discovered. And you continue to chase that carrot while feeling more and more and more trapped.
BUT your outside appearance becomes more and more boisterous. You become pushy and overly self-confident because “we are the only people with the tech” and you have been told that you know more than anyone else. You buy into the fact that “those people” (anyone who isn’t buying into scientology) just doesn’t understand how superior you really are to them. And those people are ok to lie to and those people are ok to hide things from “because it’s for their own good.”
And you get to the point where when the doorbell rings or your phone lights up, you don’t want to answer it because you’ve given your last dollar to scientology and if it’s not scientology asking for another dollar you don’t have it’s the bill collectors asking for the dollars you gave to scientology and don’t have to give to them. But, you keep telling yourself it will all be ok, because you are a superior being and you will MAKE IT GO RIGHT.
That is the truth about how it feels to be a scientologist.
Questions?
Val R no questions. You covered it very well! And don’t forget that Scns are the upper 10th of the upper 10 percent of the people on the planet. Another number he pulled out of his ass. Except the flock believes this and it starts a lifetime of superiority and arrogance that they show to the outside world, making them insufferable. There are none so blind as those who will not see.
Lovely post ValR.
As far as, “How does it feel to be a Scamologist”? After listening to a great many members, I feel fairly certain the most common feeling is ……
It feels hungry. A Scamologist never has enough food and never has enough money. Why? Because The Scam takes all the money and the only food available is terrible crap that doesn’t cost hardly anything.
Most religions have requirements/consequences….It use to be for Catholics no meat on Friday, and you MUST go to confession…learn all those prayers & responses…(NONE of that is IN the Bible).
I once had a 9 year old J.W. in one of my classes….she couldn’t “exchange Christmas gifts”(dime store stuff)…couldn’t celebrate her birthday by bringing in cupcakes.. She’d always remark “I can’t do that” etc.
However…she ACCEPTED one of the extra Christmas Gifts I had purchased, tearing it open with glee….if any OTHER child brought in cupcakes for THEIR OWN birthday…she was sure to GRAB ONE.
ONE DAY IT WILL ALL CATCH UP WITH HIM…..THE SPIDER WEB IS DISINTERGRATING AND ONE DAY THE SPIDER WILL DIE….
It is terrible what JW children have to go through in public schools. One side of my family is JW. When my little cousin was in elementary school almost every other day was some child’s birthday. She could not participate in any way…a strict edict sent down from her mother to the school stated she was to be given a small CD player with headphones and was to go to the office and sit quietly and listen to JW lectures while the other child’s party was going on. The same for any other activity involving holidays like coloring, making decorations for various holidays, coloring Easter eggs etc. My poor little cousin was picked on unmercifully by other children. Children can’t understand why one of them can’t make decorations and eat cupcakes or sing songs and when the teacher can’t explain it either other than “Her religion doesn’t allow it” then kids can get cruel. Her mother finally followed most other JW parents and removed the child from public school and homeschooled her. Pretty much all of my other JW relatives were homeschooled.
Scientology and Witnesses have many parallels in how they control their adherents but their dogma are completely different. It’s as if there’s a book out there entitled “How to start your own cult”…rule number one is “It doesn’t matter what the dogma is you must control all aspects of your cult…dogma is secondary. People will worship a dog turd if you control them”.
“People will worship a dog turd if you control them.”
Yes. And we have all seen evidence that is the truth.
Inside This Scam …… people worship that 4 foot nothing dog turd that calls itself the Poop of Scamatology!
Loved your share about the JW child, Balletlady. If you haven’t yet, watch “A Perfect World”, starring Kevin Costner as an escaped convict and a terrific little boy actor who plays a JW kid abducted by him. Directed by Clint Eastwood. A superb film in every way. I think you’ll like it.
How can you claim that something is “all-denominational” when you have ZERO tolerance for people (ill advised at they may be) in the so-called “Free” Zone? I have NEVER heard of a church who would persecute people who start their own Bible study at home. Try this in scientology and you will be picketed as a a “squirrel.” Or, most likely, worse!
Where is all that tolerance and goodwill for “believe anything you like” if one chooses to reject scientology entirely? But wait, that’s bigotry and all the “apostate’s” fault!
Todd, yes and where is the, “what’s true for you is true for you” attitude that Ron espouses?
This is the maxim that enabled me to walk away. It (Scientology) wasn’t (isn’t) true…..
Most large religions persecuted anyone who strayed the tiniest bit from the leaders’ proclamations. No one kills as many Muslims as Islamist theocracies and Islamist terrorist groups do, and no one has ever killed as many Christians as other Christians have. People used to be burned at the stake for translating the Bible.
Scientology is an incredibly traditional, old-fashioned religion.
Amen to everything you said, Lliira! Hypocrisy, thy name is ORGANIZED religion! All of it!
When your aren’t dreaming with your head in the clouds about how great you, Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard are, it feels like you are not devoted enough, not doing enough, out-ethics. And the longer it’s been since you made a contribution, the worse those feelings get. You feel hunted. That’s what it feels like to be a Scientologist.
I got around the donation guilt by being a staff member. In those days, that was donation enough. Nobody thought to get staff to donate. We had no money, and they knew it, so they didn’t try to get any.
“It does not demand of you that you be or believe anything at all.”
Ha! I fell for that lie when I was evaluating whether to get involved or not. As I learned from my study of Aristotle as a young boy, I am willing to entertain any idea as long as I am not forced to accept it. I am an equal opportunity disbeliever. I will disbelieve darn near anything or anyone.
When they told me that I could disbelieve, I was really excited. I had rejected Christianity young in part because you had to believe in Jesus in order to experience Jesus. To my young eyes that seemed like choosing to be crazy.
“Yes! Finally a religion that doesn’t require you to believe! Finally!” It’s what made me feel comfortable about going down the rabbit hole. I knew that I didn’t fully understand hypnotism, but I also knew that as long as I could disbelieve I would be safe.
Unfortunately, in reality that was a big fat lie, as so many things they told me up front turned out to be. As soon as I expressed anything but devout belief, my local DSA got rid of me fast and got everyone I knew to disconnect from me so I couldn’t spread my heretical ideas
I know that I am preaching to the choir here, but I suggest no one believe a thing they say.
“Scientology and Scientologists never demanded anything of me.”
Hahaha! CofS is a “charge all the traffic will bear” organization. They are relentless. If you are the type of person who will give the shirt off their back to their friends in need, CofS will happily take the shirt off your back and accept it as their rightful due. And they will never ask for less, they will only ask for more.
“Well Gene, we have established that you will give the shirt off your back and we see you are wearing a shirt now. Go ahead and hand that over. Great. We have you working nearly every waking moment for free, on the edge of exhaustion and starvation, living in a hovel, with no shirt, but we feel you have more you can give. We want your pants too. Hand them over too, it’s to save the universe.”
They will ask things of you that no decent person should ever ask of another human being without even blinking or thinking twice. My ED asked me to cancel my wedding to my pregnant fiance to go for training for nine months. I walked in on our HAS trying to get a pregnant staff member to get an abortion so that she could remain on staff as a volunteer. That sort of thing doesn’t even register as a memorable event. Just another day at the office “building a better world” Church of Scientology style.
Gene Trujillo, hand over your pants, too. It’s to save the universe. So funny.
That’s utterly sick. I hope she didn’t abort and that you got married.
My ED Paul Weyn reluctantly agreed that I should be allowed to get married before I went off for training so I was allowed to do so and it was a lovely wedding. However, after months of hounding me mercilessly not long after my wedding to my pregnant fiance he told me that if I didn’t go for the Golden Age of Tech Training that our Org would be the only one that didn’t receive the new release, the Golden Age of Tech.
I didn’t want that, so out of love for my org I decided to take one on the chin and go for the training after all. I never wanted to, but I didn’t want my org to be the only one to not get the Golden Age of Tech.
If you are willing to go to extraordinary lengths for the CofS, they will accept that as their rightful due and ask for more. And when you make a life destroying decision for their benefit, they are holding you to it no matter what it costs you and what means they have to use.
After I went out on a limb for them, they in return had my family (who I was trying to protect from them, since they gave absolutely no fucks about the family of a little degraded being like me, I didn’t have any money at all) threatened with disconnection to force me to work for free against my clearly stated will to leave. That is the sort of criminals they are.
My friend didn’t abort her baby thank goodness. A good thing too. A few years later when I was visiting her and her family with my family, her new baby died of SIDS while we stayed overnight. It was so terrible, one of the worst days of my life let alone theirs. I was sure glad that she had a previous baby to hold on to through that dark time. No thanks to the CofS, who would have gladly seen her baby die so they could retain slave labor and not have to worry about providing decent childcare.
@gene, I’m reading this thread sick to my stomach.
There is no end to the horror stories from people who have managed to escape. Most of us have kept our mouths shut but are opening them more and more as time goes by.
Does Miscavige not see this? The teensy bit of “white pr” he can force someone to spew only makes more people who have kept silent on the outside come forward to refute the over the top spew that those inside have become so inured to that they believe all people will believe them because, well they said it.
Their teeny edge (dare I say fringe) of the internet is slowly eroding.
“They’ll take the shirt off your back”
AND complain that you didn’t wear a better one.
AND never thank you for anything, since they’re entitled to take everything you have and more…
They are vampires who will suck you dry. Your money, your energy, your time – it is never enough. Never, ever, ever ever EVER enough! And after a while you’ll accept this as truth and feel guilty. No matter how much you give, no matter what you do for them or how generous your contribution of effort, money, time, etc., is you will still feel a kind of chronic, low level guilt. You’ll start believing it has not been enough, will never be enough. You’re “out exchange”. No matter what you do or give you’ll ALWAYS be “out-exchange”. That IS the message they continuously send, and at some point you’ll go into agreement with it . And as soon as you do, right then… they GOTCHA. You are their creature, their robot. You’re done.
“It does not demand of you that you be or believe anything at all.”
Except that The Scam has all the answers and Tubby knows the right way to handle everyghing.
If that was even partly true, The Scam would be full of people. No matter how many buildings they had, they all would be jam packed full of people with lines around the block begging and pleading, “Let Us In”!
As it stands, the people who are IN are begging and pleading, “Let Us OuT”!!!
I saw another part of the brainwashing I felt…if I needed to veer off their scheduling demands of balls to the wall 24/7 for ANY reason…I was “off purpose.” That used to twist my guts in a knot. I wasn’t “off purpose” when I needed to leave the building to see my 1 year old son when he was in the hospital with a gash in his head from the nanny’s car with no seat belts. I did that anyhow after my brother practically pushing me out the door and paid the penalty when I returned. As Mike points out above how scino’s “feel” controlled but with cognitive dissonance redefine this, “Controlled — though they would categorize this as “dedicated” or “on purpose”. I felt totally controlled when I needed groceries but had no money, I had a sick child but not allowed to be with them, when they said that I “off purpose.” Ugh!
What about your CSW (“Completed Staff Work”)? Students had to submit one of these if they wanted time off. They had to make up the lost time.
As the supervisor of a failing course room, a student wanting to change their schedule, or had an emergency, made me sick to my stomach. How was I going to maintain my stats? Scientology made me quite unfeeling towards others, fearing for my survival.
Scientologists not paying their bills meat their bones.
Scientology is the way out of traps with no way out of the traps. Only scientokogists with an extra braincell makes it.
The only true things $cientologosts are liberated from are their wealth, free will, objectivity, families and life.
And their connection to reality. Not to mention compassion, empathy, humility, and any sense of humanity.
Thank goodness so many exes have found their way back to these positive attributes.
When I read yours, I saw a NEw name, appropriate for today’s holiday: $cientologhosts; regges being $cientologhouls.
Just playing around with words.
A mispelling but I love mashing up words to create new ones like sarcastic = sarcaustic. $cientologhosts regularly haunt all those empty idle morgues out there.
Don’t forget the “no talking about your case” dictum. If ordinary Scientologists were free to talk about their case, the truth about the expense-reward ratio, and many other things, would come out.
Imagine two COS friends talking (“nattering”):
“We both just spent X-thousand dollars to run around a pole. All I got out of it was sweaty and tired. How about you?”
“Same here. And tell me – why did we need to pay anyone anything, much less thousands of dollars, to run around a pole? We could run almost anywhere.”
“So true. And not only that…”
just in case anyone thinks all religions is the same
How does it feel to be a christian?
Being a christian means having hope and faith. I became a christian one night in my bedroom. I didnt have to buy anything, it was free. I didnt have hope in the future or faith to believe in god, but that changed overnight. They are both free gifts given to me and anyone who calls on god. I had a revelation that Jesus really did rise from the dead and from that moment onwards ive been a christian.
While there is a bit more to it, the gist of it is, its a free gift from god.
mark IV, my days as a Christian were a constant conjuring of belief which required a huge mental conditioning. I was led to doubt my own intuitions and feelings, as they were subject to Satan’s influence. I was also led to fear the evil world and basically end relationships that did not “draw me closer to God”, which can be interpreted lots of ways.
Religions are not all the same, but a lot of religions seem to me to be at least similar in that (lousy) regard.
At least with Christianity, I simply walked away from it and nobody could say much about it. If my family had been very devout, that could have been a different story.
Just listened to the Sirius interview with Smerconish. Great job Mike, and an especially good response to that last question, not an easy one to deal with but handled expertly.
Gotta say that I have loved Kominsky Method before this season, but the last couple episodes are hilarious!! Alan Arkin doing TR-0 must really ruffle the flocks feathers. The writers are doing a pretty good job of making it look weird while telling the truth, and sounding pretty real. My favorite is the scio guys coming to the door, and his grandson has 1.3 million!! I wonder where they go next year with it!!
Mike Rinder, this point that you are making about the real world of scientology versus the public-relations-bullshit-version of it the Mighty Toolologists present to the rest of us lowly, reactive meat-sacks in their tired, trite social media posts, blogs, press releases, and websites can’t be overstated.
There is-ALWAYS,ALWAYS, ALWAYS- a need to parse, to translate what they say. A simple formula that often works is this: whatever scientologists assert to be true, assume the opposite is so. Their ” bridge to freedom ” is a bridge to slavery. They
do not embrace the protection and enhancement of human rights, but trample on and delete them, as a matter of policy and decades of actual, everyday practice. Their “social betterment” programs are social leeches and inurement vehicles for Miscavige. And so on, ad nauseam, ad infinitum…
Thank you Mark for stating exactly what Scientology IS so succinctly
You are spot on my friend! You have an ability to describe exactly what this cult truly is
Mark. Have you ever considered writing for the Entertainment Industry?
I mean Screen Plays for TV and scripts for movies. You have a super great talent for writing as well as a talent and sense of humour that is truly “heads and shoulders” above most all others that I have seen.
No need to answer that question. It was just some high praise and I didn’t intend to have you quit whatever you are currently doing and try something very risky and writing for the entertainment industry is certainly a very “high risk” endeavour.
“Scientology and Scientologists never demanded anything of me.”
Any ex-scientologist or even a current scientologist knows that this line is absolute bullshit. In fact, if a scientologist is studying at their local org or mission and a long lost friend comes to town for a visit, that scientologist wouldn’t just be able to tell the course supervisor that they wouldn’t be in on Wednesday evening but they would be back Thursday or Friday. This sounds like a simple enough request, and it is in the real world, but not in the cult. Why? It is ‘out-KSW’ (the student has other fish to fry) and would impact the staff’s already pathetic stats (and what’s more important than stats in scientology?).
I clearly remember the first time I witnessed something like this when I did the ‘comm course’ in the 70s. A woman was late for course because the bus she was riding was running behind schedule. The course supervisor took her aside and grilled her on this then sent her to ‘ethics’ because it was her fault the bus was late. Unbelievable. And this was at a low key mission before the Wimbush de-dinging era or the ‘finance police’ raids that crushed the mission network with its heavy ‘ethics’ being slammed in. Fortunately for this woman, scientology ethics worked on her. She was able to see what a wack-job organization she was dealing with and was never seen at the mission again. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t catch a clue and it was more than a decade later that I woke up and got the hell out of that spin bin.
@Ms. B. Haven. You have no idea how this comment resonated with me. I work at a very small law firm. We don’t have vacation per se, but we also don’t have a strict schedule. I have been out for over 35 years, getting closer to 40 years every day, but there are some things that still bring a guilt trip in me.
I have the hardest time taking time off after all these years.
All I have to do is say “I won’t be in from this day to this day” and the response is “ok.” Or if it’s a big deal, like a surgery or some illness in the family “take all the time you need” or “are you sure that’s enough time?”
Yet, I still feel guilty typing my days off on the calendar. Trust me the other people who schedule weeks at a time off don’t feel the same way. It’s amazing how something ingrained in you way back when can stick to you for so long.
I’ve got that guilt too.
Scientology presents itself in public based on lies. In this article, John acts like an immature little boy, if that is what he is. I went through the same cycle in Scientology. First reject all religion, then reject all psychology, then reject everything else. Suddenly, Hubbard is the answer. But don’t go in too deep. You will find that the man put together pieces from every religion and then tried to tie it all together. Sorry, it does not work in the end. Scientology and Dianetics are full of contradictions. Follow it to Hubbard’s ultimate end and you are left wanting. No, Scientology is based on incorrect assumptions from the start. It ends in a whimper.
John must have been a brilliant kid at ten years old. Read the Bible, cover to cover, all the nasty psych books of mom’s, and dianetics. Man what a kid. At ten I was trying to sneak peeks at Dad’s Playboy magazine. Not that I knew what I was looking for but because I was trying to find out why my older brother was always taking it with him and sneaking it back.
David, my thoughts exactly! This guy must have had an IQ of about 300 (BEFORE Scientology since we all know auditing raises your IQ)! No normal 10 year old would be able to understand a psychology book. And no 10 year old would be able to decipher Dianetics. Then again, maybe ONLY a 10-year-old could understand that nonsensical gobbledy-gook. The Bible? Well, they might have partially understood parts of it.
So true about the difficulty in trying to understand DMSMH. When I was first in I was all gung-ho and ready to gobble up any book put in front of me. Several high level staff discouraged me from reading dianetics because it was too difficult to understand. They always pointed me to other Hubbard blatherings that we’re supposed to be easier to understand.