This is the twenty-fourth 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 24
The Scorched Life After Lost Faith
Due to national economic upheavals and trusting the wrong advisor, Josh and I had a major financial setback. I did not take it well. I blamed myself for Pulling-it-in and no longer trusted myself to make the simplest decisions. Many Kleenex boxes died in service to my over-active tear ducts. A couple of months after this disaster, our lives seemed to return to normal.
In the past I’d always relied on my strong, internal engine to get me to my next goal. Unfortunately, I was low on gas and I couldn’t seem to shift out of second gear. Though I hadn’t done any Scientology services for years, I decided to fix my bruised self by going to the Flag Land Base for some Auditing.
Two months later, I arrived at Flag with high hopes of digging myself out of my funk. A chatty, Director of Processing (another word for Auditing) interviewed me. This was my big chance to say what I hoped to handle with my Auditing. I told him that I wanted a female Auditor who spoke unaccented English. Swimming through heavy emotional waters, while struggling to understand an Auditor’s thick Slovenian accent wouldn’t be helpful. I added that I was feeling low and needed someone who was upbeat and smiley.
At Scientology’s Flag Land Base, they trained Auditors from around the world. They threw English-as-a-second-language student-Auditors at us over-paying parishioners on a regular basis. Unless you were a VIP. The VIP’s got the bright, good-looking, accent-free, and fully interned Auditors. There was no disclosure about this bait and switch routine.
I ran the zipper up and down my sweatshirt while I sat in the waiting lounge. The door to the inner sanctum of Auditing rooms opened to reveal a middle aged, frumpy white man, with disheveled hair. My Auditing folder was clutched to his chest like a shield.
“Hello Lili, I am Peter. Please follow me.” I winced when I heard his thick Eastern European accent. My worst nightmare. Once he’d handed me the E-meter cans, I realized he was not a fan of pausing between words. I didn’t want to be a problem, so I kept my mouth shut. I watched his lips as I struggled to follow his words. I didn’t feel his support when the Session predictably went South.
I’d wanted to recover confidence and faith in myself. Instead, I found myself locked in a room with a man I didn’t like, while being spied on by a camera mounted in the corner. To make matter worse Peter asked questions having to do with sexual incidents — most of which happened in past lives, billions of years ago. I hated revealing erotic content to this old white guy and what any of this had to do with my current situation I had no idea.
Between Sessions I hid out in a small room stuffed with L Ron Hubbard’s books and dictionaries. In the good news department, this time away from my over-scheduled life, alone in a book-lined room gave me peace. This sanctuary also served as a refuge from IAS Registrars. They trawled the Auditing waiting rooms for vulnerable catch between Sessions with their various buckets of guilt-inducing chum. Full disclosure, this grindingly awful Auditing program cost me twenty-five-thousand-dollars. Yeah, I know.
As craptastic as the Auditing was, the quiet time between sessions led to some much-needed introspection. I decided to Confront how I went about making big decisions. I’ll cop to being a bit impulsive. I spotted the fact that I’d decided to say yes to that investment advisor before I’d even met him face-to-face. I realized that since I’d made that decision already, no amount of due diligence would have changed my mind. I had checked him out half-heartedly online. Turns out this investment dude had been jailed for fraud years earlier. News of his incarceration must have been on page twenty-seven of my Google search. Too bad I rarely clicked past page three.
Since the financial disaster, my life had flipped into a gray existence of no self-trust and outward facing suspicion. This sad, distrustful existence was a dagger to my heart. I wrote down policy that’d help me avoid falling into future financial disasters. What I didn’t write down but I decided anyway, was don’t consult any Scientologists for financial advice. Cuz for damn sure, that’s the last place I’d find a sane viewpoint about money. Confronting my past errors about big-decision making opened the door to trusting myself again.
During my Auditing Sessions, talking about being a past-life vestal virgin and lesbian to boot wasn’t helping. Inconveniently, it was a bit of a turn-on. I couldn’t even look at my Auditor. But in the good news department, if I ever decide to write erotica, bam, I got my story.
I called Josh and told him how I Confronted our disaster and come up with policy so it wouldn’t happen again. He thought that was great. I felt his love through the phone line. I remembered how Josh had been so calm about the loss when it first happened and said, “We’ll be okay. It’ll get better.” I’d been mad at him because I thought he didn’t understand what a blow it was. Now I saw that he’d had the right idea, we still had us. I missed him so much and couldn’t wait to get home and hug him and Van. My engine restarted and I found my smile.
Apparently, the Case Supervisor thought that dredging up past-life sex incidents in various temples and office buildings had sorted me right out. And just like that, I was done with my Auditing Program.
I wrote a bull-shit Success Story about how looking into the past freed me up to live a better life in the future. Oh yeah, and I thanked L Ron Hubbard, cuz if you didn’t thank the old rotten-toothed bastard, they’d make you write it again.
The Big Win That Wasn’t
Back at home and in better spirits, I faced a new challenge. Van was in ninth or tenth grade and homework had become a big problem. Actually, it had been a problem even in elementary school, but I did nothing about it. Just because he was smart didn’t mean he was willing or able to do hours of daily homework. I hit a wall with him lying about doing homework, when one of his teachers emailed me about getting no homework for weeks. I discovered that screaming, cajoling, and threats didn’t move Van in the homework department. So, where did I turn? To L Ron Hubbard. Sorry, Van.
This problem with doing homework was a red flag that something was wrong. Inside the Scientology bubble, that translated to my kid having undisclosed transgressions against teachers, public school, parents, etc. I decided that Van needed do an Ethics Program with Amends. I wasn’t enough of a blind follower of L Ron Hubbard to just pitch him into the local Ethics Officer’s pit-of-Make-Wrong awfulness.
I had a twofold reason for enforcing this Ethics action on Van. One, I wanted to handle the problem with homework, and two, I wanted to show Van how Scientology Ethics tools could handle all kinds of life problems. And bing, bang, boom, pave the way for Van to step up to being a full-on Scientologist. I wrote up his Ethics Program with the help of a public Scientologist who made her living off of helping bubble-dwellers keep their kids on the straight and narrow.
First, Van was required to disclose pages of transgressions. He didn’t look happy after he was done. Then he had to do Amends and wash our cars or something. I’ve blocked the memory of whatever dumb-ass thing we cooked up for him to do. Next, he had to do some Scientology kid’s study courses. The good news for me was that the kids’ study courses I made Van take, were done in Scientology’s Ventura Mission Course rooms. Which actually had students in them. I liked the bustle of the slightly cramped quarters the Mission operated out of. The bad news was that Van did the courses without any apparent enjoyment.
My favorite part of his course days was driving back in forth to Ventura and chatting with Van. He was great company and I loved the one-on-one time alone with him away from the distractions of day-to-day life. As well as making him take Scientology Courses in Ventura, we bought him some stupidly expensive Auditing. I didn’t find out until we quit Scientology that Van had hated it.
Throughout the homework Ethics program, Van knew he was being blamed for laziness, or willfulness, or stalking down the road to juvenile delinquency. Once the Ethics program was done, the homework thing seemed to settle down. At that time, I only looked as far as Scientology for a solution to this problem. Scientology Ethics hadn’t proven all that helpful to me over the years, but I still used it to bludgeon my son into doing his fucking homework.
I patted myself on the back and took a Big Win on Scientologically “handling” Van. When his next report card came in, he almost failed his math class or whatever subject had started the whole Ethics Cycle. I ignored the proof that I hadn’t handled shit. In the logic department, this was a predictable companion to my sticking with a religion whose founder spouted repellent homophobic and racist quotes. My stomach curdled while I justified, “It was just the times,” “It was a different generation,” or “He wouldn’t say that now.”
Kids in the bubble are raised by wolves, I mean culty-minded parents. I was a perfect example. I hadn’t even let Van see any school psychologists. Yeah, I visited the principal once to dodge Van’s appointment with a “head shrinker.” I signed a form and everything. I didn’t want that school’s “enemy-of-the-church” poisoning my son’s mind. As a card-carrying member of Scientology’s vendetta against what L Ron Hubbard called Trick Cyclists, I had regularly donated to the cherch’s CCHR front group. This was the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights. They fought the evil Psychs and their wanton psychiatric drugging of kids and called Ritalin a “chemical straightjacket.”
In conversations with Van after Josh and I left Scientology, he told me he noticed something wasn’t right with him from about Middle School on. He thought he was lazy. As the years passed, he grew increasingly distressed when he didn’t “grow out of it.” I’d never seen my energetic, creative, and inventive son as lazy. I had assumed everything with him was hunky dory. I guess he’d learned to fake a smile, just like me… I’m so proud.
I found out years after leaving Scientology that Van had ADHD. He told me that finding out and getting the right prescription improved his life. I had to do a quick reaction check. Years ago, I would have twisted myself into a pretzel. As a Scientologist, having a child on “Psych” drugs would have branded me some sort of deviant fail-parent. I’d have been coerced into reading all of L Ron Hubbard’s turgid declarations about the Suppressive effect of Van’s diagnosis and the mind-flaying end product of his prescription. The preferred end product of this obligatory Ethics pressure cooker would be to convince me to get Van off his prescription meds and into an Auditing chair. Or if he was considered too degraded for Auditing, to drag him into a twilight shit show of Ethics mind fuckery.
My reaction to finding out about Van’s ADHD diagnosis post-Scientology was gratitude. And sadness. I was grateful he’d found a way out of his depression and solved the mystery of his self-classified laziness. I was miserable because I hadn’t helped him.
As a Scientologist, I had viewed Van’s college years as busy, successful, and a satisfying adventure. His skills were in demand throughout his college years and he had a job in his field lined up before his prestigious post-graduation internship was complete. I was always happy to brag about my Up-Stat son to anyone who made the mistake of asking, “how’s your boy.”
I groaned inwardly thinking about Van defying a thicket of Scientology “truths” he’d heard from birth. Such nuggets as there’s no such thing as mental illness, Auditing can handle that, or Ethics can handle that, or worse, if they can’t handle it, it’s your fault, because you’re a Degraded Being, or a Down-Stat piece of shit.
Back when I was busy Scientologically “handling” Van and the homework nightmare, I failed to help him. Van Made it Go Right back then, to get me off his back. I’d taken a Big Win for solving the situation. Within a year of this “handling,” Van announced that he no longer wanted to be a Scientologist. Josh and I acknowledged him with some sort of okay, fine, got it, type deal. I didn’t believe strongly enough in L Ron Hubbard’s teachings to fight him on it. But I was as ready to defend his right to choose not be a Scientologist as I was to assist him if he wanted to go for it
I wish that back then I’d said out loud that I’d support him and defend his decision. I wish I’d helped him get tested by mental health and educational professionals. I wish I’d understood that applying L Ron Hubbard’s Ethics “Tech” basically made my son wrong and drove him toward depression. Luckily, with zero help from me, he found a solution… So much for being a good mom.
The Prison of Self-Censorship in Scientology
It was drummed into my cranium early on that I was never to read, watch, or listen to anything about Scientology not approved by Scientology. L Ron Hubbard was a raging racist and homophobe. But if you read an article quoting LRH being a racist or homophobic, you were the bad guy. Yup. You’d get thrown to the Ethics wolves for reading critical material written by Suppressive Persons. Toilet scrubbing would factor into your future.
I had never mentioned this rule to Van. I mean, at what age do you tell your child, “Ah, by the way, you can’t read, listen, or watch anything negative about Scientology. You can only examine what L Ron Hubbard wrote about Scientology.” Even though that’s a dump-truck load of conflicting, dense as mud, pseudo-science. I just couldn’t say that to him. My logical, question-everything child would never have let that rule stand.
Van’s ease at gliding down the byways of the internet and his natural curiosity made it inevitable that he’d stumble across the truth about Scientology. It was easy to blunder into how cruel, controlling, and abusive the cherch was. Unless of course, you were a Scientologist, because then you’d have no reason to see this factual information. If some friend had the bad taste to ask me about The Hole, or any of the other well-known scandals in Scientology, I knew, whatever that friend heard or read, it was all lies. Any good Kool-Aid drinking Scientologist would never stoop so low as to read any opinion about Scientology not sanctioned by the cherch.
How could thirteen-or-fourteen-year-old Van discuss this with us? Did he wonder if we’d Disconnect from him if he rained on our culty parade? I’ve spoken to a couple of young second-generation Scientologists who disagreed with the cherch’s teachings. One kid had the urge to protect his parents from being ripped off. They thanked him by kicking him out of the house.
It hurts my mom-heart that any mother could prioritize her nebulous spiritual freedom over the love of her child. I’ve had more than one phone call with a distraught spouse connected to a gung-ho Scientologist. They felt trapped and had to live a lie because they loved their spouse or child. The price you pay to stay connected to a Scientologist you love is silence. Not speaking your truth about your pain with an organization or religion to someone you love, is a horrible burden. Van shouldered that burden alone. I regret that deeply.
About Van’s “ADHD”: I’ve a few friends so diagnosed, & I would have been, too, if it had existed at the time. Truthfully, what I was was bored out of my skull without a clue that I still had to act like a respectable student once in a while. On top of that, I HATED hearing the “you’re not working up to your potential.” garbage, so worked at things even less once I figured out the pattern. One teacher, 5th grade, was the guy who took on the
“problem children” like me. He had notarized permission to do what he deemed necessary to get my attention and used it — once. When I ran home crying to Mom about it, she already knew his side of the story so I got no sympathy, only a demand that I behave better to avoid such embarrassment again. He also knew that I needed some sort of carrot, so if I was sufficiently good & did my work, I could sometimes dip into a box of auxiliary reading material he had next to his desk. I LOVED reading —anything and everything — so was a really, really good and conscientious student for the rest of the year, and most of the rest of my schooling by accident, or habit, or whatever. As a Mensa member later, I discovered that we bright kids often exhibit ADD/ADHD behaviors and were similarly bored out of their skulls in school if they weren’t particularly challenged. scientology was designed to appeal to bright people and, I suspect that “study tech” was designed to torment those of us who COULD actually read and understand adequately-written material. That LRH was so JEALOUS of us, I now see, and that ‘tech’ was designed to HIS perceived needs, poor guy. After 42 years of getting away from that trap, I’m still not as able to read for enjoyment as I once was.
Oh, what a tormented life of study he must have led.
My son was lucky to have a fifth grade teacher like yours. She walked by his desk one day and, of course with my permission, dropped her checkbook and her bills on his desk and said “since you’ve finished all your work, you have an hour to figure out how to pay these bills.” He figured it out and was engrossed for the entire hour, and now at 42 is a successful non Reed Slatkin type money manager who has me as one of his clients and to keep his mind occupied he sets overachiever goals like this years’ goal 22 mountains of 13,000 feet in 2022. Nine left to go..
I’m so glad I escaped the scientology trap shortly after he was born so he didn’t get indoctrinated. My daughter was 4, so she didn’t remember any of her small amount of indoctrination.
I adore good teacher stories. Hopefully we all have at least that one teacher who got us.
Karry’s whole family disconnected from us in 2010. I wonder how they’re doing.
Lili,
Thank you for putting into words what so many of us who are out felt while in. Hopefully someone or many someones on the edge of leaving are also reading these words and will take the next step.
I don’t comment on your posts because by the time I finish digesting all the feelings that they have stirred up decades after I escaped, it’s days later, but believe me, your posts are amazing.
My daughter in law who I’ve known a couple of decades wants to know what I went through all those years ago. I’ve collected your posts and she will read them, they are close enough to explain the total mind control scientology has on people that it will put her in a position to be able to discuss my past with her in depth.
ValR, you made my day. Writing this was cathartic and opened the door to many a discussion while picking the memories apart.
I love you sharing this with your daughter in law.
Thanks for taking the time to comment today.
Lili, wow, this one hit so close to home. At one point my son also said he didn’t want to be a Scn (even though he attended a Scn school). I let him know that was OK to choose not to practice it. But over time, his sister pulled him back into the church and even onto staff at a Class 5 org.
Don’t beat yourself up for “not helping him” with the ADHD or other things he was going through. He knows that everything you did you did to help him and that you love him. I’m sure he must feel that. The difference between you and the Kool Aid drinkers is that you were smart enough and had high enough confront and had enough of your own mind still intact to be able to look and question at some point. And that is what eventually led you out of the labyrinth. I’m so glad for you that you got out, but also glad you got your whole family out with you. That means the world. You know your actions of leaving were right because now you are all flourishing and prospering, a thing that didn’t happen in the cult for you. Great installment today. Love your writing!
I’m sorry that your son got pulled back in Cindy.
We moms really are so hard on ourselves. I appreciate your encouragement not to beat myself up.
My mom would talk about her regrets as a mom and I always said, I turned out fine.
They’re definitely is not a manual. But I really don’t appreciate L Ron Hubbard selling his solutions as the way to handle kids.
Thanks Lili. And I agree that Ron was not the one to be talking about how to handle your kids. What he put his son, Quentin through resulted in his committing suicide. When Ron was told of it, he said something in ager, like, “Look what you did to me?!’ Ron made it about himself and acted as if he was the victim instead of his dead son being the victim.
I had read about his narcissistic response to the death of Quentin. I’d already read quite a bit about his casual cruelty and how his Admin Tech made it so you couldn’t win and how he started the whole physical punishment on the ships.
But his response to Quentin’s suicide was always the most unforgivable parental failure.
But when I was ‘in’ he was Ron the humble genius. Sigh.
It sounds like Van was one of those who thrived in spite of Scientology, rather than because of it. Though you did some superficially wrong things, I suspect your example of determination and intention in how you lived, was critically influential in his success.
My heart goes out to the families that really suffered and got torn apart, in and because of Scientology. Like Mike and others here who have lost contact with children because of it.
Thanks for these stories, they really give us a lot of insight.
No need to continue punishing yourself for earlier actions. Scientology ‘tech’ punished you enough! You and your family regained freedom as a result of your awareness! Scientology ‘tech’ stifled all that and you’ve realized that. What could be better!!!!
Being able to take back your life, unchaining yourself from that punitive cult …you’re OUT OF JAIL sweetie!
Love the way you express yourself.
Indeed, I’m ot of jail!
I have to thank the old rotten toothed bastard (I know I’m insulting bastards) for the stories I read here.