Through the Bubble – Lili’s Adventures in Scientologyland Part 16

 

 

This is the sixteenth installment of the account of a journey into and out of scientology — written by one of our long-term readers. I hope you enjoy her insights, humor and style. 

Lili also provided a glossary of terms.

 

Through the Bubble – Lili’s Adventures in Scientologyland

This is my quirky recollection of events. Others may remember things differently. Lingo is italicized on the first mention, capitalized after that. I’ve compressed complexities in the cult to simplify your reading pleasure.

Part 16

Sea Org Recruitment and Wrong Targeting

A year went by with no major cataclysms. Then Murphy’s Law snuck its trouble-making snout into the cherch’s business. A Sea Org Upper Management team showed up on a Mission to grind someone underfoot like a cigarette butt.

One of the Successful Actions used by Sea Org Upper Management was to carefully isolate what the right hand was doing from the left. That way, no Sea Org workers were ever Responsible for the fallout from their toxic program execution. Some luckless staffer, lower down the Org Board at an Organization like Santa Barbara’s or a Center like Ventura’s could pay the bill for a higher up’s disastrous decisions.

The Planetary Clearing Program was in the deep freeze in Santa Barbara. And the staff member census was way down. Two recent visits from Sea Org teams had decimated the ranks of the Santa Barbara Staff. They were the dreaded Sea Org Recruitment Missions. (Quietly referred to as Rip Off Missions.) Some of the starving Santa Barbara staffers heard the siren call of meals provided and a bed for every Sea Org worker.

They believed the lie that they could end up in exciting Posts like making L Ron Hubbard technical films or giving briefings in Paris, France. They left Santa Barbara for greener pastures. One hopes they didn’t get Posted to the Freewinds, Scientology’s cruise ship, to crawl through the conduits doing blue asbestos removal with no safety gear. Or become Body Routers on Sunset Boulevard.

The raid that robbed the Santa Barbara Org of highly trained, critical staffers left Josh with yawning holes in Santa Barbara’s Seven Division Org Board. The Sea Org members, per LRH policy, were supposed to replace each recruit with a staffer of similar training and value to the Org. Like trying to get a poacher to get a permit before a night kill, recruiters only cared about this week’s Stats. Santa Barbara could pound sand.

The gaping holes in Santa Barbara’s Org Board sucked in the inevitable Sea Org Sort-Out Mission. Josh glowered around silently. Remember, Nattering just makes it worse. But I was dying. What happened? Josh didn’t speak of his imminent hanging, er, public shaming, and undodgeable demotion.

I watched funny, uber-capable, and thoughtful Josh’s light dim. I fretted when he wouldn’t talk to me about why he was so down. Was I not the person he should lean on? I wondered if his shutting me out meant our relationship wasn’t stable. Thanks, Reactive Mind, for making Josh’s pain all about my concern that we’d break up.

Throwing caution to the wind, I encouraged Josh to quit staff and get a satisfying job. Unfortunately, his five-year staff contract was not yet finished. And Josh, loyal and true blue, chose to take his lumps and shitty pay and Make it Go Right.

Make it Go Right was Scientologese for, suck it up buttercup. And a way to shut you up before you tried to explain some un-fixable scene that cut across your ability to A: come on Course. B: attend an Event. Or, C: bring in a check by Thursday at two. No staffer had the time or inclination to listen to your little tale of woe.

Josh’s vulnerable situation came about because of Wrong Targeting. Another word-vention from L Ron Hubbard. LRH loved to point out how non-Scientologists excelled at stubbing their toes while kicking the car tires when they ran out of gas, cuz they were crap at Confronting the actual source of their problems. As if non-Scientologists owned the patent on picking the wrong source of their difficulties.

The latest Sea Org Missionaires’ hair-on-fire duty was to get the Santa Barbara Org back in compliance with the Seven Division Org Board staff requirements. The recent staff rip-offs, er, Sea Org Recruiting Missions, had bagged a couple of highly trained Santa Barbara staffers.

In typical, paint the garage while the house burns down fashion, instead of investigating why there were holes where trained staff members used to be, the Sea Org dudes decided who was to be nailed to the cross before they ever arrived. And bonus, they saved time. Josh was their Wrong-Target winner. He was removed from being the Division Head who hired staff. According to Sea Org wisdom, Josh, with his towering Counter-Intention, was the sole reason the Org was suffering a staff shortage.

They busted his ass down to Test Evaluator, a Post he detested.

Snarky update; after they yanked Josh for ‘failing to meet expectations in his hiring position,’ new-staff intake took a permanent nose-dive.

Josh’s Musical Chairs Funhouse Staff Adventure

Josh was still plugging leaks on his morning Moonlight with our house cleaning business. He tamed the paperwork demons, climbed ladders, and washed second and third story windows because the experienced guy I hired was suddenly scared of heights. And other heroic, grab his cape and save-the-day activities.

Down at the Org, to no one’s surprise, Josh’s demotion to Test Evaluator did not yield more qualified staff. Or any staff at all. I quit asking Josh how his day went. Then a full-time staffer, the Division Head of Finance, Blew staff after a twenty-seven-dollar payday. Josh, mere weeks from having his lofty position as a Division Head stripped with maximum disgrace, was posted quietly as the new Division Head of Finance.

Josh was pleased to shut the door on the rest of the Org. And its fixation on ever-higher Stats, the next great Event which wouldn’t be great, and the pretense that Scientology was expanding like never before. He dived headfirst into the paperwork disaster left by his predecessor. Evidently, Making it Go Right with beams of spiritual intention in the accounting department didn’t actually cut it.

Lucky for the cherch, Josh had taken a few accounting classes in college before quitting one quarter before graduation to join the cult ranks. Josh’s dad was a life-long hater of Scientology. In his agnostic worldview, heaven was reached through the pearly gates of education. This rendered Scientology the road to Hell for pulling his eldest son back from the brink of graduation, with a ribbon-wrapped diploma and Congratulation cards littering the living room. Over the years, Scientology Ethics personnel tried without luck to convince Josh to Disconnect from various family members. But his dad was target number one.

Josh read up on his staff Finance duties, which included doing monthly accounts audits. He also had to quickly unlearn the good accounting habits he’d developed in college because L Ron Hubbard’s method of Finance handling was better. Cough. As a supposed religion, they needed proper paperwork for Uncle Sam. Evidently, no previous butts-in-chair accounts-wranglers had bothered to figure out how to do the monthly accounts audits.

Josh figured it out. He was now in charge of paying the bills and paying the staff. And happy-happy, joy-joy, he was the boss of paying weekly Sea Org Reserves. If a parishioner coughed up, er donated, a hundred dollars, fifteen percent of it was supposed to go straight off the top, upstairs to the Sea Org Upper Management. It was theoretically for the all-important Planetary Clearing Program. Josh also had to pay the rent, electricity, gas, water, phones, and building maintenance. To say that there wasn’t enough income to pay for all this was an understatement on the order of “A nuclear explosion is rather noisy.”

Josh prioritized and penny-pinched creatively. At one point, when the Registrar got sick, the Org’s income dipped lower than the usual mad scramble for cash. But the rent had to be paid, so Josh put off paying Sea Org Reserves. The following week, they would cut off the phones. Josh paid that bill.

It was winter, and we students studied, bundled in many layers, in blue-lipped misery as the gas had been off for months.

“Why Finding” and How Josh Almost Became a Suppressive Person

The wheels of Upper Management ground slowly, but where Sea Org Reserves were concerned, “Speed of particle flow equals power,” an oft used L Ron Hubbard quote, ruled the day. When the expected Sea Org Mission was fired to Santa Barbara, their crosshairs were painted on Josh’s backside.

They came to do a Why Finding. That’s just some 1984 doublespeak confusion-talk for figuring out why something happened and often coming up with the wrong answer. They had to inspect and report the Why. Why the Sea Org Reserves hadn’t been paid in a timely manner. Um, the checks hadn’t been written. Because Josh was trying to keep the doors open.

All the Santa Barbara Executives knew what Josh was doing. They’d stand united and back him up, right? Not so fast. And why did Upper Management need three Sea Org Missionaires on-site to do this Why Finding thing? It was pretty fucking obvious what was going on.

They were there to look scary and show Josh the gravity of his deplorable actions. Mission accomplished. Well, I was intimidated. Then Josh was ordered to Los Angeles for his Committee of Evidence. That’s the Scientology Kangaroo Court.

Step one was where various staff members that worked with Josh in Santa Barbara got leaned on to write Knowledge Reports about what an Evil-Purposed asshat he was for endangering the important Planet-wide work of the cherch. You couldn’t dodge writing up one of those KR’s. If you didn’t write that report, and it better contain some juicy stuff, you’d go to Ethics. So, you’d write up that report, hand it off to the Sea Org vultures, wash the slime off your hands, and be done with it. They’d take it from there.

I wanted to go with Josh to the Committee of Evidence and support him. Nope. He couldn’t bring me. Or an advisor. Or a friend. Or any witnesses to state what a great guy he was. Or any Santa Barbara staff members. No one would stand up and say that Josh kept the phones on for the Registrars. The water on so the toilets would flush. The electricity on so the parishioners could study after the sun went down. All for the greater glory of the cherch.

This Committee of Evidence was a black box. Josh couldn’t even record the proceedings. And he might or might not have a chance to defend himself. Oh yeah, and he wasn’t allowed to discuss it, so I’d never know. There’s this whole book called Introduction to Scientology Ethics by L Ron Hubbard. There are lots of different levels of infractions. You don’t want to know. Bottom line top, if Josh was found guilty of a High Crime (Scientology has sooo many High Crimes), he might be declared a Suppressive Person.

Josh would be ejected from the cherch, and all the good little parishioners would be required to Disconnect from him. Even if he saved your marriage or helped you leave an abusive relationship. If you were in Scientology, you’d have to Disconnect from him. That whole Disconnection gig would include his family. Yeah, I’d be required to Disconnect from Josh. For the record, I would not have complied.

It would have simplified our lives if Josh had been declared a Suppressive Person. But, Catch-22, people who work over forty hours a week, for less than your niece tucks in her pocket for half a day’s babysitting, don’t grow on trees. The Committee of Evidence happened, and Josh was probably told he was a terrible person. He wasn’t very talkative after that.

Josh was officially and in writing, because L Ron Hubbard says, “If it isn’t written it isn’t true,” banned from Finance Lines. Yeah, they liked the word Lines. A lot. Lines are like what you’re in charge of and what part of the Scientology Org structure you’re visiting. For example, I got busted onto Ethics Lines, or Josh isn’t supposed to work on Finance Lines.

Green as Grass, Goodie-Two-Shoes, Doesn’t Disappoint the Sea Org Drones

I didn’t know what Josh’s new official Post title was after the Committee of Evidence busted him off Finance Lines. No one was available or capable of taking on his Finance duties. Josh returned to his large, mock-wood veneer desk and large, noisy adding machine. Unofficially. I was kinda beyond caring. I was still pissed that he’d been dragged through that awful Comm Ev. I was on my steps toward Clear at the time. I managed to not let on how pissed off I was at Josh’s abusive Ethics treatment.

A green-as-grass new staff member was hired to be Josh’s boss and in control of the Finance Division. Someone neglected to alert the new guy that his underling, who did all the work, was banned from doing said work.

Josh had to let his new boss become a signatory on the Org’s checking account. Josh didn’t hand over the keys to the locked file cabinet where the checkbook was secured. Green-as-Grass got an Instant Hat on Scientology’s version of Finance Policy, a twisted road to L Ron Hubbard’s enrichment, and an innovation in exactly no non-Scientologist’s mind.

An Instant Hat is where you train the person to wear the right Hat (job duties, etc.) and function on their Post. Oops, then there’s the instant part. That’s where they give way below the minimum amount of training the new staffer needs to function in their Post. The staff member training them just hits the high points, like 15% off the top for Sea Org Reserves. Yeah, they taught him that part. This Instant Hat deal for some newbie staffers is genius. When they crash into the solid wall of inevitable failure, you can blame them for not Taking Responsibility. And dodge blame yourself, thus forwarding the Aims of Scientology.

The Org limped along, and Sea Org Reserves were paid more often. However, the financial ledger showed that the Org still owed an old balance of thousands of dollars. Who knows how deep in the hole the Org was to Upper Management? Not me. I was yelling “quit already” in Josh’s one ear, and his boss was yelling, “pay Sea Org Reserves first,” in the other.

Josh had a Win one week when instead of paying to buy extra trash cans because the dumpster was full and oozing some brown goo, Ethics came along to save the day. Some new guy doing his lower Conditions was convinced to do his Amends project with a cash contribution. His path to forgiveness included coughing up the amount needed to get the dumpster emptied before the rat problem came to the attention of the city.

Green as Grass’ bosses in Los Angeles really wanted that Sea Org Reserve money. Some faceless drone in the cherch’s Upper Management finally screamed loud enough to override Green as Grass’ common sense, and ordered him to Make it Go Right. Josh noticed Green as Grass lurking near his door at the end of the evening one Wednesday night. Josh jiggled the doorknob of the Finance Office as he left for home. Solid. He took off.

The next day, Josh’s office door was ajar. He rushed in and was shocked to see that a crowbar could overwhelm the drawer of a lockable ‘safe’ filing cabinet. The checkbook lay within as if mayhem didn’t surround it. Josh reached in to assess the damage. If there’s a word for raping and pillaging an Org’s finances, Green as Grass did it.

It appeared Green as Grass had driven down in the middle of the night and hand-delivered the Sea Org Reserves money as promised to his Upper Management bosses. He then vanished, possibly to join the ranks of Upper Management.

It’s not like you can stop payment on a check to the Mother Cherch. But the lack of cherchy fellowship suggested here just should have bounced me right out of there. Alas…