Through the Bubble – Lili’s Adventures in Scientologyland Part 22

This is the twenty-second 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 22

The Dodgy Stock-Market-Training-Hard-Sell That Pushed My Hell-No Button

Now that we were parents, my ambition switched from funding the Bridge to Total Freedom, to funding Van’s college fund. That and Josh and I needed a retirement plan, so Van wouldn’t have to take care of us when we aged up into Down-Stat, un-productive, oldster-hood.

Josh started studying up and investing in the Stock Market. A Scientology friend of ours tried to convince us to send Josh to an overpriced Stock Market Investment training program out of state, taught by who else; a Scientologist.

We resisted the exaggerated claims that this Scientologist was a pipeline to the beating heart of inside information. Never mind that insider trading was illegal. Some of the “most-ethical” Scientologists believed that societal laws didn’t apply to them. Yeah, they were the most ethical people on the planet, until a dodgy way to earn money crossed their desk. Then like a dog on a hot scent, they bounded after it.

Those sketchy business opportunities weren’t for the likes of Josh and me. They were for the insulated-from-justice, super-rich citizenry. And some wealthy Scientologists. This elite club skated above society in their own entitled lane. I didn’t come face-to-face with the parallel track that some prosperous people traveled on until I was a Scientologist. My upbringing hadn’t exposed me to the realities of the financial caste system. It’s one thing to read articles about the unfair advantages some group has, but it’s a whole other thing to hold in your hand documentation of unpunished wrong-doing. I peeked behind the wizard’s curtain at the unsavory actions of a wealthy Scientologist at the holiest of holy locations, the Flag Land Base Folder Tank.

The Folder Tank was a repository of confidential, cough, files that Scientology kept on each parishioner. Some folders contained copious notes from the Auditing Sessions of Scientologists and some folders were full of their Ethics paperwork.

Ethics for Scientology Peons Like Me

I was at Flag in the mid-eighties, struggling along on my endless OT VII, deep in debt, and a Scientologist in Good Standing. But I somehow ended up in Ethics. Seriously, you could be Jesus on the cross, as blameless as a lamb, and Ethics would find something to bust you for. In the good news department, they weren’t into having you scrub toilets for your Amends projects. They had under-age and human-trafficked foreign-citizen Sea Org workers for that. But an English-speaking, trained-up Scientology nerd like myself had skills they could use. For free.

Soon I found myself sitting at a coffee-stained desk in the windowless Folder Tank room. My eight-hour Amends project included dealing with a tall stack of folders. As Amends projects went, this was a pretty cushy deal. I was told to do Ethics Summaries. I banged out a couple in half an hour. I’d done them before. You skim through someone’s ethics history in multiple files, from oldest to newest, and write short summaries of each Ethics action. You write the date, what the Scientologist did wrong, what corrective actions were taken, and what they did for their Amends. No biggie.

The Unapologetic Scientologist

The final tall-ass pile of ethics folders all belonged to the same dude. My eyes had opened as wide as archaeologist Howard Carter’s must have been when he discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun.

Days earlier, I’d made friends with a sweet elderly Sea Org lady, who joined me at my table in the fancy restaurant in the Scientology hotel where I was staying. It was considered a major faux pax to eat at a restaurant outside the Flag Land Base. Parishioners were supposed to eat at the over-priced Scientology restaurants. Yup, you could help Clear the Planet, just by eating. On an earlier trip to Flag, I’d spent a six-hour Amends project slinging hash in that very same kitchen.

Due to her being wheelchair bound, this eighty-year-old staff member was allowed to take her meals in the expensive dining room with the rest of the paying public. She couldn’t make it to the staff bus quickly enough to pound down the slop in the Sea Org staff dining commons in a different building.

Sweet Older Lady quizzed me about my training level and told me if I had to do any Amends projects while on base, she could use my skills. I thought it’d be nice to help her right there in the hotel. Besides housing public Scientologist’s meat bodies, the hotels had Sea Org staff work areas.

Dust motes filtered down around me in the locked Folder Tank as I reached for the next file to summarize. My mouth fell open. I read the most astonishing parade of ethics violations I’d ever seen. The slimy man whose Ethics summary I was working through was the opposite of a shining example of the workability of L Ron Hubbard’s Ethics teachings.

Slimy Man was a serial seducer. His habitual MO was inviting women to visit exotic locales with him. Slimy Man would tell the women he loved them, and more than once gave them sexually transmitted diseases. He broke up marriages, then broke implied engagements, cracked hearts, and made women feel demeaned. But hey, he was ridiculously endowed — in the cash department. I wanted to scrape the filth off my eyeballs.

Slimy Man was never asked to apologize to the women he’d deceived. Scientology Ethic Officers were no doubt taught that the victim had to Take Responsibility for having the nerve to Pull-In his brand of abuse. Definite no, on the apologies. But Slimy Man’s file was stuffed with receipts for crap he’d paid for, to collect his get-out-of-jail-free card. This guy not only never scrubbed a toilet for an Amends Project, he’d merely risked writer’s cramp writing the checks to get him off the hook for his latest “lapse” in the behavior department. Slimy Man’s history of purchases included framed limited-edition prints of book-cover art from L Ron Hubbard’s sci-fi books, leatherbound editions of L Ron Hubbard’s Scientology books, and special edition, super-high-priced E-meters. He’d donated to the Planetary Clearing Program up to a level I’d never even heard of.

Scientology has yearly IAS awards Events that I avoided like the coming of the locusts. Church leader David Miscavige handed out trophies to high-roller donors. These donors, also known as Whales, (not in Scientology’s official, but banished dictionary of double-speak terms), spurted short, scripted, and pre-approved speeches. They bellowed with Scientology-drilled Intention about how deeply moved they were to forward the Aims of Scientology and honor L Ron Hubbard’s Legacy. Gag.

Some of the towering trophy monstrosities were the height of a Ferrari. Seeing pictures of those ginormous constructions being held in front of someone’s belly, like the oversize prow of a ship, left me shaking my head. Slimy Man probably built an entire room in his McMansion to accommodate all the glittering trophies he’d heaved aloft like Superbowl trophies. Despite my outward calm, reading about Slimy Man’s sordid exploits caused my stomach to clench.

I noticed that Slimy Man’s history of unscrupulous sexual conquests was occasionally punctuated by battles with various business associates. Slimy Man’s bottomless income stream came from making investments in other people’s cash-strapped businesses. On numerous occasions interspersed within the record of his revolting sexual escapades, I noted that he’d ended up as the sole owner of the business he was “helping.” It was never his fault that the other guy couldn’t keep his company. I was sickened that this man had been allowed inside the cherch. Not only was he Out Ethics by L Ron Hubbard’s own standards, he was being fawned over at a VIP level.

But, I needed to finish my Six-Month-Check at Flag without spending more money on Auditing. Or more time in Ethics for Attacking an Up-Stat. I imagined this Ethics Summary was laying the groundwork in anticipation of a large donation. Slimy Man’s next contribution would no doubt dwarf the cumulative donations of me and Josh. Perhaps it’d dwarf all of what Santa Barbara Org’s parishioners had donated in the last ten years.

That said I wasn’t going to let this sex-shark cost me another moment of upset. I finally finished the nauseating summary. I handed in my report to Sweet Older Lady. She initialed my Amends Project paperwork and thanked me with sincerity. She believed what she was doing was right.

I was reminded of this slimy douche bag when Josh was being talked into taking the get-rich-quick stock market training program. I backed Josh up in refusing, with fangs dripping behind my smile.

Drifting From the Cherch and Living Debt Free

Josh and I dug being a family and playing with Van. Other than the occasional Scientology picnic or boring Event, we’d drifted beyond the influence of the cherch. The Registrars wanted me to buy more services. Thankfully, I’d learned to say no. In Bigger Wins I’d paid off my debts and was making a decent living. A part of me still worried that I’d spill the beans to some Registrar that we’d paid off all our debts and had, gasp, savings.

I didn’t tell Josh about my shameful distrust of myself. I didn’t want to dishonor the OT fiction that I was this improved version of myself. Scientology teaches you to not discuss your personal bad feelings, like they are this highly contagious disease. As if to reveal your fear, your doubt, or your pain, is this massive disservice to the listener. I believed; thanks L Ron Hubbard, that if I revealed my negative emotions or thoughts to someone, I could Restimulate their own toxic emotions. And since I was OT, I might have made someone sick. Or they’d die or something. I was a powerful spiritual being after all. Not that anyone noticed, myself included.

Even though Josh and I weren’t actively Participating, we were toeing the L Ron Hubbard line. We did this by self-policing ourselves using LRH’s restrictive rules. I’d been hooked on LRH’s axiom that “production is the basis of morale,” since the very beginning.  I realize now that other factors contribute to one’s wellbeing besides working my skinny ass to the bone. The do-it-yourself, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps philosophy, displayed in the classic Western, pervaded the teachings of L Ron Hubbard. For those unaware of LRH’s past, he’d published many pulp-fiction stories prior to hitting the jackpot with Dianetics. His swashbuckling tall tales included Westerns. Having read most of Louis L’Amour’s Western themed novels, (miles better than anything LRH ever produced), I admired that go-it-alone and don’t-burden-another-with-your-troubles, type advice. Consequently, I leaned hard into the restrictive L Ron Hubbard rules, even as I drifted away from Corporate Scientology.

Spiritual Pioneers and Suffering for Scientology

Underneath my smiley exterior lay festering doubt. Doubt about my commitment to Scientology. Doubt concerning my ownership of my own decisions. Doubt that I could resist revealing my financial status to the next Button-pushing Reg. I was loathe to give up any more of my hard-earned income to the cherch. I didn’t express these concerns to Josh. I was afraid if I started divulging, I’d never be able to turn off the spigot.

Speaking of spigots, I was mad at Josh one day early on in my OT journey and yelling about some dumb thing. I was standing in the kitchen by the sink and suddenly the water fixture in the sink blew upward in a fountain of spewing water. We forgot the argument, raced to turn off the water and I figured getting mad at people was off the docket, because I’d clearly broken that pipe with my OT Powers.

I was proud that Josh and I had survived our years of trips to the Reg and the inevitable debt that followed. After years of taking Courses, Auditing, and getting sent to Ethics, I needed a shoulder to cry on. I’d hinted at my less than satisfactory experiences within the cherch to my bestie Lorna. Like all good bubble dwellers, she completely dismissed my concerns.  She trotted out a slew of common Scientology justifications: “We’re pioneers who are paving the way for future generations. Scientology isn’t perfect, but it’s a workable system. Maybe you should do some Conditions.” And then she quickly changed the subject.

Nightmares and Crappy Advice

In one of my worst nightmares, I sat in front of the Ethics Officer. As if I’d been injected with truth serum, I blabbed that I’d withheld my financial status from the Registrar. My lava hot transgression? Not spending every last penny on the Bridge to Total Freedom or the Planetary Clearing Program. I lived in the bizarro world of acting all Up-Stat and successful while simultaneously lying to Scientology staff about how we groaned under our On-Purpose debt burden. Having massive Bridge-to-Total-Freedom debt was a badge of pride inside the Scientology bubble.

Josh had eventually walked away from the Org and got a real job, paying real money. Our jewelry business started picking up steam and Josh began funding our IRA’s. I didn’t know the balance of our savings, but as long as I didn’t know how much money we had, I didn’t have to feel guilty for withholding that information from the Reg.

I was still a workaholic, and demanded that my Stats be up. I was still under the influence of the Scientology mindset where L Ron Hubbard stated, “Make money. Make more money. Make other people produce so as to make more money.” From his essay Principles of Money Management.

Josh told me about what he learned while studying investing. This caused my curiosity on the subject to blossom. The only investing L Ron Hubbard was down for was investing in your eternal spiritual freedom. Uh no. One day I asked our besties Lorna and Deave what they did when they invested. Much to my shock, I discovered that they did indeed invest, but on a small scale. Typically, Scientologists get caught up in the borrow-and-buy cycle. But Lorna and Deave seemed to have stepped off that treadmill.

Deave had been visiting a business for years, because of his work, and noticed that suddenly they were building multiple buildings behind the gated entry, beyond prying eyes. It was a publicly-traded company, so he’d started buying their stock. The company expansion continued, their new contract with the government was announced in the media, and their stock exploded in value. Deave sold his stock, bought himself a new car, and paid off some bills. I thought he should have hung onto the stock and bought a used car. Two years later, something happened to the government contract at the expanding business, and the high stock price fell back down to where Deave would still be driving his old clunker. Good thing he didn’t ask for my advice.