Through the Bubble – Lili’s Adventures in Scientologyland Part 7

This is the seventh 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 Seven

Miss Popularity Can’t Stop Comparing

Things were popping. Specifically, things were popping in the, who will I date on Saturday night department. I was in demand.

Guy Number One took me to dinner and the movies. I love the movies. But this one was a blue-ribbon stinker. Josh and I would have huddled together and whispered made-up awards. Like, the female co-star gets the “slept with the hideous director to clinch that part” award. Or the beefy star took so many steroids he won the “brain shrunk before our eyes” award. And other compliments on the idiocy of casting with your dick and auditioning with your skirt up. We would’ve snickered and snorted and had a grand old time.

Back to Guy Number One. “Oh my, that actress is dreadful.” And, “I don’t comprehend why the special effects are so obvious.” And, “I think the author of the book didn’t understand how to convert her prose into a screenplay format.” I stifled a groan. My ankle jigged. I was a coyote, foot caught in a metal trap. The tasty dinner roiled in my stomach. People who give stupid opinions mid-movie are not my friends.

Guy Number Two took me out for pizza. I love pizza. Although these days the whole gluten, dairy, nightshade-bomb thing, kinda killin’ pizza night. Guy Number Two had called on his inner bulldozer while doing his Communication Drills to a Final Pass. He looked me in the eyes like a recovering nerd trying to convince himself that girls liked to be stared at. Dude, you can look at the wall behind me or something. My eyes are now bleeding. Stop looking at them.

Guy Number Three had a fancy car, wealthy parents, and thought he was quite the catch. We kissed at the end of the night. A night where I got to know him while he monologued about all of his many hopes and dreams. His kiss reminded me of that past life when I was a fish, and I kissed another fish. But I couldn’t mate with that fish because it was so off-putting and therefore caused that species of fish to go extinct, and the planet imploded. Anyhoo, kiss, not good.

Guy Number Four looked better. Snazzy job. Nice looking. Took me shopping on our second date and bought me shoes. He moved right up to apartment-hunting on our fourth date without consulting me first, in his grand plan to include me in his life. He kissed okay. He didn’t suck at movies. His taste in pizza, though prosaic, was passable.

When someone looks at you like you might be The One, it knocks out a lot of the previous self-destructive, no-one-wants-me self-talk. Guy Number Four had the makings of a good, comfortable life-mate. He was Mr. Good Enough. But he hadn’t blocked out the stars. I was less excited than I should have been at his arrival on my dance card.

L Ron Hubbard’s Scales, Success Stories, and the Ideal Scene

It Girl showed me her written-up shopping list of what she wanted in her Ideal Scene life-mate. Ideal Scene is another word-vention of L Ron Hubbard’s. Basically, it’s striving for things to go the way you think they should go without saying something ludicrous like I want a million dollars tomorrow.

You should aim for the smooth, functional, everything goes the way it’s supposed to, as your Ideal Scene. Unless you’re a slacker, then there’s no hope for you. When we’re busily Confronting our way to success, we’ll leave your lazy ass in the loser lane.

It Girl hooked up with a guy I didn’t see coming within a month. Ideal Man was a bit too serious, rule-following, and self-disciplined for my taste. As someone who had gotten crap for being too “fun,” I saw him as that handsome horse who, like my boring-ass first horse Red, was well behaved and dull as dirt. It was inevitable that his fetching brand of pursed lips and steely-eyed charm would leave me indifferent.

It Girl seemed happy enough with her Ideal Man, and soon they were picking theme colors for their small wedding. That got me thinking. I figured if I was serious about this find-my-own-Ideal-life-mate deal, maybe I should follow her lead. As a newly minted singleton, I was secretly delighted not to have to compete with her effortless charm, style, and beauty.

I wondered whether the very likable Mr. Good Enough could become my Ideal Scene in a life-mate. I pulled out my pad and chewed on the end of my pen. Previously, I’d applied the Ideal Scene tool for the productivity side of my life. An Ideal Scene Day for a good Scientologist would be that day you wrung the maximum number of dollars per hour from your work. Preferably you worked by the job. That way, you could work maniacally faster, risking burn-out. But that’s not a problem because Scientologists don’t believe in burn-out. Thus, you could squeeze out a higher-dollar-per-hour Statistic. Your Win for the day? You used your expanding spiritual superpowers, and Confront, to raise yourself up the Responsibility Scale.

L Ron Hubbard wrote a Book of Scales. A book. Not a pamphlet. A freaking hard-cover book, which I was required to buy. Like reading a bunch of grotty scales would save me, come the Rapture. But it was on the Check Sheet that the Ethics Officer made me study. So, I read the detestable scales. And, I said sage things about how deep they were and how they embodied the steps necessary to pierce the veil of secrets in this tricky sector of our galaxy.

Whenever you finished a Course, you had to write up a Success Story. If your Success Story didn’t rise to the correct minimum level of sycophantic, laughable, ass-kissery, it was back to the beginning for you Bub. These Success Stories, would of necessity, include thanking L Ron Hubbard for giving us the tools to free ourselves from the Hell of living an unconscious life on Earth, which according to LRH was a prison planet. If I wrote that this book of scales put me to sleep, was as dull as dirt, or that the book needed to be consigned to the dustbin, the Ethics Officer would make me read it again. Because obviously, I didn’t understand the towering wisdom within its sacred, scriptural, cough, pages.

Volunteering a Success Story out of the blue was a guarantee of some excellent and spontaneous love bombing. And the happy-juice jolt of dopamine would feel sooo good. I imagined writing up my Ideal Scene shopping list in a life-mate and then finding the perfect guy. Or sorting out my conflicting feelings for Mr. Good Enough as the noose tightened. I’d sort out who was my soul mate, then write up a True Romance Success Story. I’d be that week’s prize and proof of the workability of L Ron Hubbard’s teachings.

Duplication and Why We Make Mistakes

L Ron Hubbard wrote a lot about why we make mistakes. And really, recovering from our past mistakes, and improving ourselves to prevent those same mistakes in the future, was our reason for gathering around Scientology’s campfire. I believed that LRH had the answers. I believed that he offered a way out of the labyrinth of our frailties and failures to get it right. Like a truffle hog rooting for hidden fungi, I dug deep into the bulletins for pithy bits of wisdom. I read that my Reactive Mind made me do irrational, stupid shit. I read that I wouldn’t have made that mistake if I’d Duplicated that task properly. In the finding-shit-out-about-myself department, these nuggets of understanding were Big Wins for me.

The concept of Duplication in Scientology has a subtle twist in its use. It’s not just imitating something perfectly. It’s understanding something deeply so that I’d become expert at it.

I’d never wasted brain time sorting out why some skills like bike riding and working with horses came easily. In contrast, higher math and memorizing historical dates glitched like swimming in glue. My previous solution had been to avoid the glue. But in Scientology, if they set you a skill to learn on that Check Sheet, you had to look up all the words, get your Confront on, and then bing, bang, boom, you’d Duplicate it.

The understanding I got, and it was a bit fuzzy to me, was that Duplication in L Ron Hubbard’s universe meant understanding what you were studying, like down to the molecules or some shit. Hmmm, that sounds like I never got that whole Duplication deal. Cool.

See that picture of a tractor there? And that diagram? Those instructions? All you had to do to learn to drive a tractor, was to Duplicate the information. Perfect Duplication of what you read was a key to your future spiritual superpowers according to L Ron Hubbard.

While all the slackers sleepwalked through their days, gummed up the works at their jobs, and ruined it for the rest of us, we Scientologists, the tigers of society, Duplicated shit and got shit done.

I figured out that if I had to, I could learn that new skill on the Check Sheet, and I gave Scientology the Big Win for getting me to the other side of that sticky obstacle. Non-Scientologists would give maturity and self-discipline that Win. But I was drinking the Kool-Aid and couldn’t see past the need to bow to L Ron Hubbard’s massive genius, cough, that he shared with the world. For a price.

About that tractor, I wouldn’t just rely on L Ron Hubbard’s concept of Duplication. Get that tobacco-chewing old fart over there to show you how it’s done. He’ll let you know how that tractor overheats on hot days and that you’ll need to top up the radiator every hour, or you’ll crack the engine block.

Directions aren’t everything. They’re a fantasy, in a glitch-free Public Relations pipedream. Murphy’s Law is alive and well on Earth. L Ron Hubbard never acknowledged that Murphy lived on Earth. If Murphy’s Law befell you, or you made a mistake, you clearly didn’t Duplicate properly and were just a Down-Stat, Off-Purpose, Ethics Bait, Piece of Shit. Cursing in Scientology was a thing. Like smoking indoors and drinking coffee at ten at night.

Kissing for Science, and the Epically Gross Bathroom

After Josh and I broke up, we saw each other frequently at various Scientology parties. From a distance. Sometimes while I was with Mr. Good Enough. We’d wave at each other, and I thought I was over him. But I did have one teensy problem. I kept remembering Josh’s kisses, as these gravity-defying, make me forget the rest of the world type experiences. And good kissing was on my Ideal Scene Shopping list for a perfect life-mate.

I figured I was suffering from some distance makes the heart grow fonder, type bullshit. I decided I needed some factual data to sort this kissing situation out. Mr. Good Enough was endeavoring to align our mutual purposes. He wanted us to ride off into the sunset in our convertible as we drove up the Bridge to Total Freedom together.

During a break time on Course, I cornered Josh and said I needed his help. I’d seen him with this horrible, pretty young woman who was a newbie at the last party. I recognized the conniving look in her eye, roving for the main chance, and didn’t want Josh to get caught in her clutches. I’d seen him with other women and hadn’t reacted. But seeing those two together at the last party pushed some button I couldn’t name. Various students were shifting our way, perhaps chumming for gossip. I dragged Josh into the nearby repulsive bathroom in the garage.

“Number one. Are you dating Sylvie?” I asked. Breaktime was only fifteen minutes long, and I’d already burned five.

“No.”

“Good.” Josh squinted at me and angled his head like the RCA Victrola dog.

“You know I’ve been dating.”

“Hard to miss.” He compressed his lips.

The bathroom had a single toilet with one of those gas-station deodorant sticks that smell overpowering. A bit of sickly rose over a base of moth-balls smell. Kind of nauseating. It was the bathroom few people used. And the floor was sticky. The buzzing, naked fluorescent tube above lit the white painted walls like the prison room they use when inspecting anal cavities.

“I keep remembering your kisses as these time-stopping events. I need to know that it’s all in my mind.” Josh arched his eyebrows, “You know, so I can move on.”

“What am I supposed to do?” He asked.

“Kiss me,” I shrugged. “For science.”

He grinned, cocked his head, and reached for me. He bent me over backward a bit, like a dip in a slow dance. I appreciated that he gave this experiment a professional effort. Then the nausea-inducing stink evaporated, the interrogation-bright light red against my eyelids disappeared, and my knees went wobbly. I clung to him like our ship was sinking. Our kiss deepened. His fingers moved into my hair. I never wanted the kiss to end. He stood me back up.

We stared at each other. Heavy breaths were breathed. There were no words. No guy could take me out of the universe like that. It had been more intense than I’d ever felt, even with him. Crap. I reached forward and took his hand. We squeezed.

“I’m taking the motorcycle up to San Luis Obispo to visit Tim this weekend. You want to come?”

I could only nod.