This is the first draft of a novel written by our old friend Terra Cognita.
I am serializing it each Sunday. Terra has ran out of topics to cover in Saturday essays… at least for now.
Terra welcomes all suggestions and feedback — this is a draft — you can note your thoughts in the comments.
I think you will find this an entertaining journey and hopefully will be looking forward to the new installments (about 6 chapters) each weekend for a while.
Time, Place, Form, and Event
Chapter 1
I was sitting at a white plastic table with my head buried in my arms just outside the sauna recuperating from the last twenty-minute sweat-fest when I heard the thump. Half the small dank room was taken up by the sauna, the other half by the table and a cabinet holding all our vitamins. The bare bulb overhead flickered, telling me there wasn’t much life left in its filament. I glanced up toward the small window set in the redwood door.
“Joan, you okay?” I asked.
No response.
“Joan!” I called out.
Still nothing.
I roused my tired body off its plastic chair, stepped over to the door, and peered through the window. I didn’t see anything on either of the top or bottom wooden benches like I expected. I looked down. Joan lay on her side on the cement floor, inches away from the heater. I flung open the door and stepped inside, enveloped by a wave of super-heated air. I knelt down and put a hand on her shoulder.
“Joan, you alright?” Her eyes were closed. “Joan?”
No answer. I shook her shoulder. “Joan?”
I leaned over to get a better look at her face. Her skin was surprisingly dry, not covered in sweat as I expected. I shook her again. No response. Not good.
I felt for a pulse on the side of her neck while I put my other hand over her mouth to see if she was breathing. I couldn’t tell if I was feeling my own heartbeat or hers and if she was breathing, it was faint. Real faint. I started to panic.
I rolled her over on her back and put my ear to her mouth. Fuck. The only thing I could hear was my own ragged breathing and my heart ready to explode out of my chest. Fuck, fuck, fuck!
I took a deep breath, sealed my lips against hers and breathed into her mouth. Because that’s how I’d seen it done on TV and it seemed like the correct thing to do. I wondered how long she’d been lying on the floor without breathing. How long could a human brain go without oxygen before cell damage? Seven minutes popped into my mind. I breathed into her again. And again. And then remembered about the “pulmonary” part of CPR.
I moved her left breast—yeah, they were big—to the side and put my hands on her sweat-soaked jersey over where I thought her heart was—over a good inch or two of excess fat—and pressed down three times in quick succession. I put my ear to her chest but heard nothing. So I pressed down three more times. And then switched to breathing into her mouth. Three times. Switched back to chest compressions.
Why iterations of three? Because that’s how I remembered seeing it done on TV? No fucking idea. The heater clicked back on, sending out more waves of heat. If we didn’t move, we’d become toast in seconds.
I stood up and grabbed Joan under the arms and dragged her out of the sauna, adrenalin helping to move the two hundred pounds of dead weight. I lay her down on the cool tile floor and resumed my “CPR.” Maybe it was a good thing the tile was wet from my sweat; like maybe it added to the coolness; maybe it added to her distress. I had no fuckin idea.
“Help!!!” I screamed.
Chapter 2
The registrar, “reg” for short, regularly pulled students off course to enlighten them about Scientology services. The reg was responsible for signing people up for their next service. I’d finished reading Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health, commonly referred to as Dianetics, by L. Ron Hubbard, and was ready to delve in to my past. And uncover all those hidden traumas ruining my fuckin life. The ones keeping me from having the life I’d been dreaming about for the last dozen years.
“Rick Shade! I’m so glad to finally meet you,” Kim said. “I hear you’re doing really well on the Communications Course. You’re making real progress.” Her smile filled the high-ceilinged room. I’d heard she didn’t have a boyfriend.
I shrugged modestly.
“So… Your next step on the Bridge is the Purification Rundown,” she said.
“The Bridge?” I said.
“The Bridge to Total Freedom,” she said, gesturing to a large poster taped to the wall behind her desk.
What interested me most was the last column on the chart which listed the “Ability Gained” from doing each “level.” One of them read, “The ability to communicate freely with anyone on any subject.” I was decent at communicating somewhat with some people on some subjects but couldn’t remember a time I’d ever had the ability to communicate freely. Especially in front of an audience. Having to read in front of class in school was just about the scariest thing I’d ever experienced. Just saying.
“And what’s this Purification Rundown?” I asked. Getting purified sounded like a good thing.
“The Purification Rundown is so cool. People love it,” Kim gushed. She had perfect teeth and was only a couple of years older than me.
“Uh, huh.”
“You sit in a sauna in order to sweat out all the drugs and toxins in your body that prevent case gain.”
“Case gain?”
“Your ‘case,’ is that part of your mind that’s holding you back.”
“Like the ‘reactive mind.’ Like LRH—L. Ron Hubbard—talked about in Dianetics,” I said.
The reactive mind was that subconscious part of the mind that recorded everything during times of pain, loss, and unconsciousness. And was the main culprit in fucking up a person’s life. Dianetic auditing was all about ferreting out these types of incidents. Apparently, once a person looked at these incidents enough times, their power over him vanished. Sounded a bit Freudian but I’d only taken a single class in psychology. It made sense to me that traumatic incidents in my past were screwing me in the ass. And what were causing all of my problems.
“That’s right,” Kim said. “Your case is your reactive mind. Ron found that one of the major factors holding people back from being able to access these incidents in the reactive mind is drugs.”
“Drugs.”
“All kinds. Street drugs as well as those prescribed by doctors. Their residues are all stored in the fatty tissue of your body. You sweat out all these residues in the Purification Rundown. You cleanse the body. It’s incredible. Just amazing the difference it makes.”
“So you’ve done this Purification Rundown?”
“I did the Purif last year. Oh my God! I can’t believe what oozed out of pores! And my skin… It’s so much softer.”
Kim looked like the type who’d never had zit in her life.
I nodded.
“These drug residues, like from stuff I’d taken years ago… They just oozed out my body. It was incredible.”
“But how’d you know they were from the drugs you’d taken?”
She smiled widely. “Oh, you know. Believe me, Rick. It’s obvious.”
I nodded.
“I’ve never felt cleaner,” she said. “It was incredible. It was like the front windshield of my car had been cleaned for the first time in years. Like before, I’d been looking through this totally filthy glass and now… Know what I mean?”
“I can only imagine,” I replied.
“After the Purif, it was like everything was clearer. Like magic time.”
“Magic time?”
“You know, that time just before the sun sets when everything kinda glows with that beautiful lighting.”
I nodded.
Her excitement added to her beauty. I didn’t want to go back to course. Just wanted to sit there all night talking with Kim.
“While you’re doing the Purif, you should do the Student Hat,” she said.
“That’s what I actually came in to do. The Student Hat. My old girlfriend said it’d help me to study.”
Kim rolled her eyes. “Oh my god. She was so right. Ron discovered the exact reasons why people have difficulty with learning. It’s so simple, yet so profound. You are gonna love this course. It’s like a cornerstone of life. It should be taught to all kids once they’re old enough to read. I can’t stress how important this data is.”
“So you’re saying I’d be doing this course while I sat in the sauna?”
“No, silly! Not at the same time,” she smiled again. “You’ll do the Student Hat after or before your five hours in the sauna. Like you might do the Purif in the morning and do the Student Hat in the evening from seven to ten.”
“How long does the Purif take?” I asked.
“It’s different for different people. Like people who’ve taken lots of drugs usually take longer than those who haven’t. A rough estimate is four to six weeks. Some people complete the Purif in two or three. Some people take longer. It all depends.”
“And how long does one sit in the sauna?”
“Five hours per day.”
“No way! I’d shrivel up and die!”
“Not all at once, Rick! You sit inside for ten or fifteen minutes at a time and then you take a break and then you go back in.”
“And you do this for five hours?”
“The time goes by really fast. I played games with my twin. Talked. Read magazines. Those types of things. It’s actually fun.”
“I would imagine all the heat and sweat wreaked havoc on the magazines.”
“Totally destroyed em,” she laughed. “But I had a great time. My twin and I really got to know each other. Oh my god, it’s like we’re best friends now.”
I nodded. For the thousandth time.
“So what do you say we get you signed up?” Kim said.
“For the Purif and the Student Hat?”
“You’re gonna love em. I guarantee they’re gonna change your life.”
“How much money we talking?” I asked.
“The Student Hat is three hundred and fifty dollars. The Purif is two thousand, five hundred. How would you like to pay for them?” she said brightly. As if she was a barista and I’d just ordered a tall latte.
I visualized the balance in my checking account: four hundred bucks and change. And then how much I needed to survive from month to month—even if I wasn’t paying any rent. My part time job at Starbucks didn’t provide all that much and Santa Barbara wasn’t a cheap place to live.
I shook my head. “Don’t have the funds right now, Gonna have to save up for these.”
Kim wasn’t deterred. “How much is in your checking account?”
I told her.
“And what about your credit cards? Do you carry a balance?”
“I try to pay off the balance each month. You know, so as not to incur any interest.”
“That’s smart, Rick,” Kim said. “What’s your limit?”
I shrugged. “Around three or four grand, maybe.” Two months ago the bank had bumped my limit to exactly five thousand dollars.
“Perfect! You can simply pay for the Purif and the Student Hat with your card.”
I imagined my next Visa statement: owing twenty-five hundred dollars. And with no way of paying off the balance. I glanced out the window. Headlights reflected off the building across the street. Kim smiled at me from across the desk.
“Might be better if I paid for everything once I’d saved up the money,” I said.
Kim frowned. “I hear what you’re saying. You’re scared to spend the money, right?”
“Well…I wouldn’t say ‘scared’ exactly.”
“Know this, Rick. That’s your reactive mind talking. Plain and simple.”
“Like LRH talked about in Dianetics?”
“Exactly. The reactive mind doesn’t want you to get better. It wants you to stay just the way you are.”
“Really?”
“The reactive mind will do anything to survive. To hold on to those incidents holding you back. It doesn’t want you to change. And there’s something else, too.”
“What’s that?”
“You’ll become so much more able, you’ll make back the money in no time. I’ve seen this happen time and again. People do a course, get some auditing and just seem to blossom. Their ability to confront life and handle things grows so much, the money just seems to flow their way.”
I wanted to believe her. I wanted to change. “Really?”
“Sounds kind of unreal, right? Almost like magic.”
I nodded.
“But I swear to you, this is what happens. It’s uncanny. The ability gained is so great, and people become so much more able, they more than make up for what they just spent. Which by the way, is incredibly inexpensive compared to the cost of college. I mean, the Student Hat alone…just think what you could do if you could easily study any subject, like you could really get the data. Just think what you could do.”
“Would be great,” I said.
“I know, right! So you should get these services right now and not let your reactive mind do your thinking for you. You owe it to yourself. You’re a good person. I know you are.” Kim reached across the table and put a hand on mine. “I sensed it the moment you walked in the room. I like you, Rick.”
I glanced at the hand and its smooth olive complexion. I took a deep breath and pulled out my wallet.
She released my hand, took my card, and swiped it through the machine I’d been trying not to notice on the side of her desk.
I signed my copy of the receipt.
Kim said, “Alright! Let’s get you signed up!”
One of us was excited. The other, hopeful.
Chapter 3
“Help!” I screamed again. “I need help!”
Three breaths in; move left breast out of the way; press down three times. But not so hard as to break a rib. Which I recalled was a real thing.
I glanced at my dead cell phone on the table. Which I’d forgotten to charge the night before. And on which I’d been watching videos over breakfast. Fuck.
Three more breaths; move breast; three more chest compressions. I had no idea what else to do but keep on doing my total-amateurish, pathetic-ass CPR. Which didn’t seem to be working. Had her skin taken on a bluish hue or was it my imagination? Or was her coloring due to the shitty-ass lighting down there in the shitty-ass basement of the shitty-ass old building.
I put my ear to her mouth but was breathing so hard myself, I couldn’t tell if she was any air going in and out of her or not. If her chest was moving, it might have been my imagination.
“Help!” God damn it. Where was everybody?
I brushed Joan’s wet hair out of her eyes.
“Help! Anybody!” I screamed.
As far as I knew there were three others in the whole org: Supervisor, Doug, and his one student two floors up in the course room, and Brenda, the executive director. Org was short for organization, which is what Scientology called their churches. No fuckin idea why.
“Help!”
I might have heard pounding on the stairs. Might have been my heart.
“Help!”
How the fuck had they even allowed Joan to do the Purif? The woman was easily a hundred pounds overweight. Maybe a hundred and fifty. Besides walking up and down the aisles in a supermarket, the last time she’d exercised was thirty years ago when she was in college. I know. She’d told me her life story while sitting in the sauna. You hang with someone in a small box for five hours every day for weeks on end and you learn a thing or two about em.
Chapter 4
A week earlier, Joan and I were sitting outside the sauna choking down our first bowl-full of vitamins with glasses of cal-mag—a concoction of water, vinegar, calcium, and magnesium. Per Hubbard’s theory, the body needed to replenish all the bad shit we sweated out with high-quality vitamins, minerals, and oils.
“I guess we’re gonna be spending some time together,” she said.
“Guess so,” I said.
Both of us were dressed in swim trunks. Me in my faded, red board shorts. Her in a black one-piece. She wore a loose-fitting, magenta-colored shirt over hers. I was bare-chested and showed little fat. Joan wore shower slippers. I was barefoot.
“My son’s just about your age,” she said. “Twenty-four. At UC Santa Cruz. Getting his masters in Marine Biology.”
I glanced at the diamond ring on her left hand. “I take it you’re married.”
“Twenty-five years this August. Bill.”
“Bill?”
“My husband. Bill Macias. Maybe you’ve seen him around?” She smiled. “Tall, dark, and handsome.”
I smiled back. “Oh, sure. That Bill.” Short, dark, and dumpy.
“He’s on his PTS/SP course.”
I nodded. Like I knew what that was.
Joan washed down the last of her vites and stood up. “So…ready to get started?”
“Might as well get this show on the road. You want to go jogging outside or stick to the treadmill?” People were supposed to exercise for fifteen minutes prior to jumping in the sauna to get the blood flowing.
Joan rolled her eyes. “Think I’ll stick to the treadmill. That okay with you?”
“Fine with me.” For me, fifteen minutes of any kind of exercise was a walk in the park. Inside, outside, didn’t make any difference. I was in good shape.
I followed Joan into the adjacent room with the two treadmills and set of dumbbells. I jacked up the incline, upped the speed, and hopped on. Trepidation showed on Joan’s face. Three minutes into her “run,” and she was huffin’ n puffin’. By the time we hit the sauna, her jersey was soaked. I’d barely broken a sweat.
Joan put her face up to the thermometer on the far wall of the little redwood box that would be our home for the next three to six weeks and said, “One-o-five. Feels hotter.”
I wondered if I would ever work up a sweat at that temperature. The control dial next to the heater read “four.” Out of ten. I climbed up on the top bench and leaned back against the wall. Joan spread out her towel on the lower bench and sat down, breathing hard.
I glanced at my watch some minutes later. A half hour down, four and half to go.
Chapter 5
We’d just returned to the box from a ten minute break after two and half hours into our second day on the Purif. I sat down on my spot on the top bench. Joan sat down in her regular spot on the lower bench in the opposite corner as the heater. A fine sheen of sweat covered her body.
“So, how’d you get into Scientology?” she asked.
“My old girlfriend got me in. Patty Thomas. Maybe you’ve seen her around.”
“Oh sure. I know Patty. Twinned with her for a while on Student Hat.”
“Speaking of which, Student Hat is what brought me in. Figured I could use a study boost. I go to UC Santa Barbara. I mean, not right now. I’m on summer break. Start back in the fall.”
“Student Hat is a great course. You learn the fundamentals of how to study pretty much anything. Makes school sooo much easier. At least that’s what I’ve heard. The last time I actually stepped into a course room was years ago.” She chuckled. “As I’m sure you can tell.”
I nodded politely, and asked, “So, Joan, what do you do when you’re not sitting in a sauna? You work?”
“I’m an enrolled agent,” she answered.
“Enrolled agent? What’s that?”
“We’re similar to accountants but do nothing but tax work.”
“Like income taxes. Ten-forties, that kind of thing?”
“Exactly. Come tax season, I’ll be working twelve hour days. Or longer.”
“I do my own taxes. Online.”
“You’re young. Probably not making much money yet. Don’t have a lot of assets to consider, right?”
“I work at Starbucks. Got a car and a computer. That’s about everything that’s of any value. Not much to account for.”
Joan took a swig from her water bottle. “So what do you think? How long you want to sit in here this time? Ten minutes? Fifteen?”
“At least fifteen,” I said. “Maybe twenty, twenty-five. But if you don’t want to go that long, you don’t have to. We don’t have to sit with each other the whole time, right? I mean, you could sit right outside the box while I’m still inside. Or vice versa. I think that’d be okay.”
If I wanted to sweat all those drugs and toxins out of my body within the next month, ten minutes at a time wasn’t gonna cut it. I rarely began to sweat until minute thirteen. I’d been timing myself. I glanced down at my waterproof watch. And then at my forearm. Hardly damp.
“So you just walked in the doors a few weeks ago, right?” Joan said.
I nodded, recalling the moment.
Chapter 6
The former three-story hotel hadn’t looked like much from the outside. Termites and salt air had gotten the better of its wooden window frames, and its stucco sides were ten years overdue for a power-wash and coat of paint. The mismatched furniture inside the lobby complemented the exterior. The nineteen or twenty-year-old girl behind the old office desk in the lobby couldn’t have been more of a contrast.
She stood up and held out a hand. “Hi, I’m Lynn.” Her long brown hair glistened under the old lights. She could have been a model for Crest and Clairol.
“Rick Lee,” I said, shaking her warm hand. I hardly wanted to let it go.
“So how can I help you, Rick?” The smile hadn’t left her face.
“My girlfriend said you guys had a course on how to study better.”
“We do! Who’s your girlfriend?”
“Patty Thomas.”
“I know Patty! She’s great. Oh my god. Welcome!”
I smiled. Lynn smiled. We all smiled.
A clipboard and pen magically appeared in her hand. “The first thing you need to do is an OCA,” she said.
“An OCA?”
“An Oxford Capacity Analysis. It’s a series of questions designed to locate exactly what needs improving in your life.”
Like other than my study problem?
She handed me the clipboard with an answer sheet and small pamphlet. I flipped through the questionnaire: three possible answers to each of two hundred questions: a) yes or most of the time; b) sometimes or don’t know; and c) no or never.
“I’m really just here to check out this study course,” I said.
Lynn walked around the desk, put a hand on my shoulder, and looked up into my eyes. “Don’t worry. You will. The OCA helps pinpoint the areas in your life that need addressing. Like what might be at the root of your study problems.” She smiled brightly. Full wattage. Had they been playing the right music, I would have slow-danced with her right then and there.
I shrugged and smiled back. Her wide, brown eyes gleamed with promise.
She pointed to a cracked leather chair across the lobby. “You can sit over there. Just tell me when you’re done.”
Sure, why not.
I handed in my OCA after I’d finished. To Lynn. Who seemed genuinely happy to see me again. She “graded” the test and marked the results on a graph.
Ten minutes later, I was sitting across a table from Dan, the “test evaluator,” in a small office on the second floor. The army-green desk, matching filing cabinet, and three chairs had seen years of use, probably in the accounting firm across the street. Travel posters with scenes of Europe hung on three of the walls. I recognized Big Ben and the Eiffel Tower. I figured the windmill in the field of tulips was a scene from somewhere in Holland.
Dan told me that he and two of his fraternity brothers had been working at the mission ever since they’d graduated from UCSB that June. We’d probably partied at the same keggers in IV—Isla Vista, the adjacent student community. He seemed like a nice guy.
He flipped around my OCA graph and slid it across the desk. “All these points below this line indicate areas in your life that need improvement.”
Most of the dozen points fell well below the horizontal middle line. “Communication” and “Responsibility” scraped the bottom.
“I’ve always been shy,” I admitted. I would rather have dangled my legs over a thousand foot cliff than stood before an audience. Opening up to others was as fun as a trip to the dentist and talking to girls had always been awkward. Lack of confidence tugged at my psyche like a ball and chain.
Dan nodded knowingly. Like he’d seen it all before. He leaned in and pointed at the “responsibility” section of the graph. “This indicates there are areas in your life you’re not taking responsibility for; areas you haven’t confronted that need changing. Let me guess; you haven’t figured out what to do with your life. Am I right?”
“Well… I don’t know if I’d go that far. I mean, you know…I’m doing alright. It’s not like I’m destitute and living on the street. I’m going to school. I’m still young and…”
Not choosing a major was bad enough. Not knowing what I wanted to do with my life was killing me. Why couldn’t I just decide! What was holding me back from making a decision? And not just that decision. All fuckin decisions! I felt like I’d been stuck at a crossroads my whole life. Just sitting there. Gazing up one road after the other. Not knowing which route to take. Not having the balls to just choose a path. Any path. Sometimes I felt like my feet were encased in giant blocks of cement.
“I understand,” Dan said. “But do you know exactly what you want to do with your life? Where you’re going? What you’ll be doing ten years from now? Are you taking full responsibility to ensure for a happy existence?”
WTF? Was the guy a mind reader? “Well…it’s not like…”
Dan shook his head. “Got to say, Rick, this lack of decision is ruining your life,”—major emphasis on the word “ruining.” “Everything in life is either expanding or contracting; moving one way or the other. Getting better or getting worse. Things are never static. Same with life. People are either improving or worsening. There is no in between. You’re always moving one way or the other. I mean, what’s gonna happen if you never decide exactly what you want to do with your life?”
End up working at a dead end job I hated? Become more depressed than I already was? “Wouldn’t be good,” I muttered.
“Exactly,” Dan said.
Over the years, gravity had pulled on the window, giving the glass a slightly wavy, distorted look. Kinda like how I felt at the moment. I wanted to walk over and look outside.
“You need to handle this,” Dan said. “It’s ruining your life.” Big emphasis on the word “ruining.” Again.
I nodded and let out a deep breath. Poor study habits were apparently the least of my worries.
“You should begin by reading Dianetics and doing the Communication Course,” he said. “Dianetics will help you get to the root of your problems and the Communication Course will help you to confront people and life in general.” He pulled out the book, Dianetics, The Modern Science of Mental Health, by L. Ron Hubbard, a copy of some kind of workbook, and a blank invoice. “Let’s get you signed up.”
I let it out another deep breath.
And pulled out my wallet.
Wow, the first 6 chapters of your book are really good! It is so fascinating for someone like me who has never been a scientologist, to see how they operate their scheme. Your book is very well written. I am already addicted to the story and I cannot wait for more!
A clinically obese middle aged woman – 200 lbs, never exercises – on the Purif…. OMG in heaven. Forget the intense sauna, even the running alone would be too steep a gradient. With someone in this condition you start with WALKING and possibly not even BRISK walking, just ANY walking for brief times, building up to a power walk, then after a while, to jogging. Whoever OK’d that lady for the Purif should be shot.
Wait – I’m confused. Just re-read from the top beginning with Mike’s comments – so this is fiction, this story about Joan? Or, fiction as in “based on a true story with names changed, etc.”? Because if there’ s NO truth to there having been some poor unhealthy woman effectively sentenced to a heart attack on the Purif then I don’t see the necessity of getting all upset about it. So, is this fact or fiction? Because, frankly, I have enough stuff going on right now to keep me upset!
Wow, Aqua – dumb much? So embarrassed! Relieved too. Definitely fiction. Didn’t read Mike’s explanation at the top resulting in blood pressure going up. Well, that’s OK, because my blood pressure is low anyway and raising it a bit never hurts. And now I’m on board with the rest of you and can’t wait to find out what happens to poor old Joan, Terra!
Hi Aqua. Don’t be embarrassed. I don’t get half of what I read the first time!
Someone commenting here said that you do 15 minutes of exercise prior to getting into the sauna. Ha! When we all did the sauna back in the day it was 30 minutes or running or running on a treadmill before the sauna. And even fat people had to do the 30 min. But they did let you gradiently work up to the 30 minutes.
Easy Peasy! Only 30 minutes of running, wow! I was one of the originals on the Running Program in the 70’s. I was also one of the originals on the Purif shortly after. The Purif was a piece of cake compared to the rubber suits and the hours a day running on the Running Program (no one thought about using a sauna yet)! But I did look like an Adonis when I completed it. The hardest part of the Purif was the daily Cal Mag and the oil! Ugh! I still mentally gag at the thought!
Slight correction here – it was called the Sweat Program, the Running Program was that pleasant break from the daily routine of Church execs comprised of running around a pole in the nice warm sun and creating furrows in fields for the local farmers (joking)!
Hey Guys: Thank you for all your comments and suggestions. I appreciated your feedback immensely. I intend to do some editing today.
As for Joan…you’ll find out what happens to her next week.
Can’t wait Terra!
The comments stats are down so although it is not yet Thursday I think I should chip in and add my 2 cents worth (cue remarks on the low value). So – Terra – you could have the lady in the sauna “spontaneously combusting” as she has completed “New OTVIII” the week before but hadn’t yet realized she had run the “processes” wrongly? Or how about she was running OTIII on her back porch without a meter in between sauna sessions and developed pneumonia? Or how about the sauna staff were wearing LRH Lucifer suits and this keyed her in? Or her “auditor” only took up the reads that he thought were worth taking up? Or you could have Wynski poisoning her oil? (this is very likely). Well, it’s a fictional novel, is it not? So a bit more fiction would not go amiss surely? Such would be very “imaginative”!
Thanks for posting Fool. Your non-sequitur rambling and babbling TRULY exposes the damage to the mind that scamology can cause.
Almost a “This is your mind on scientology” commercial.
Pleasure Wyn, glad you feel good about that! If you didn’t grasp what I said you can always Method 9 my comments like Dave’s OODs! Don’t forget to tell Terra what type of poison he should use in the book – your input might make it a best seller a la “Silence of the Lambs”! Terra is far too reasonable and decent otherwise, (although he’s very clever and only I can spot his hidden messages), so it needs some pepping up a bit with some straightforward heinous and wicked gore and at least half a dozen “spontaneous combustions” at least by the second chapter!
Losing me here, Fool, but I’m inclined to go with Wynski’s observation.
Yes, of course! Saying otherwise would be like blowing a bum note eh?
Not at all. You assume much, Fool.
MY assumption was actually a question! As for someone who has never been involved in Scientology as I recall, you seem to be the one doing the assuming.
When I read or hear the word “Assume” I think immediately of a clip from the old TV Show…..The Odd Couple…
“Felix Unger” was trying to make a point in a court case….so in front of the Judge, Lawyers etc he wrote down the word ASSUME…..
Shortly thereafter Felix indicated:
Never Assume…..it makes an:
ASS (out of) U (&) ME………………….
Enough said…
Foolproof,
Due the Scientology’s Disconnection policy, have you been permanently separated and forever forbidden communication from a spouse, a lover, parent, sibling, child or friend? Any or all of the above? Just wondering.
Foolproof, the above totally non-sequitur question is just curiosity on my part. Respectful curiosity, but just curiosity. As such, feel free to ignore it. Though in truth I have no interest in learning your identity. Your identity doesn’t interest me. Your mindset does.
When I can’t figure someone out I can get intrigued. Kind of mentally stuck on that person. Puzzles draw me in. Usually its missing data that creates the mystery and like a puzzle piece, solves the problem and gives the true picture.
Once I understand the viewpoint from which the person is looking then I’m OK with it – Ok in the sense that I understand it, while not necessarily liking or admiring it or agreeing with it. Then again, understanding almost always has the effect of making me see that there ARE elements to be liked, admired and agreed with, after all. Sometimes, in this exercise, overwhelming agreement is created! And then everything in between. So its interesting to me. What can I say; I read a lot of detective fiction 🙂
But, again, Foolproof, no worries if for any reason you deem a fully candid answer to my question to be not for public (read OSA) consumption on this blog.
Hey Aqua – Foolproof may or not want to respond so I’m taking the liberty to interject a comment. Along with your line of thinking about understanding the viewpoint from which a person is looking, some people hate the current organization and the subject itself with enough reasons that I can understand why they want it eradicated.
Here’s a thought about disconnection. It’s probably not worth much but here goes anyway. Someday the scn organization might announce, “This is to remind all Scientologists that they are free (as they always have been . . . blah, blah) to communicate with family members in any way they wish.” – and then follow up on it.
I doubt it would cause much decrease in membership and the organization would have the onus of disconnection off it’s back. Family members insisting that the Scientologist come to his or her senses and leave would end up back in the situation in which they started. I have no solution to parents wanting to raise their children in their chosen religion or cult other than maybe bringing up the question with a parent.
Interesting, Richard:
“…some people hate the current organization and the subject itself with enough reasons that I can understand why they want it eradicated.”
So can I. As metaphor I see the cult as a doctor. He’s got a black bag full of stuff. He makes house calls. In his black bag is some life saving medicine and some nutriceuticals, lets say. Some very helpful stuff. In the bag also are shots of virulent poison! Some people get the healthy stuff. They think this doctor is terrific. Others have gotten the poison. They’ve been made SICK by this man! Even if they’ve gotten a little bit of good out what that doc dispensed, sometimes, he’s made them sick ENOUGH so that they don’t want to HEAR about any good that doctor might have done others! There’s no way they can believe that this there’s anything good in that black bag and this doctor is evil, that’s all. And the ones who were never hurt, were only ever given the bad stuff, the poison, well, they don’t get it, because they know they were helped.
In brief, its a real mind fuck, the current “field” for this cult!
Also, what you said about how the cult will possibly make an announcement when or if they do away with Disconnection. Yes, I can see that, in fact, I see it being navigated precisely this way! As if Disconnection had never at any time been a problem or even a policy! “Just to remind” everyone…yeah sure! LOL! “Thanks for the REMINDER, cult, that my daughter/son/father/mother/brother/sister is free to talk to me anytime! Gosh, these things do sure do slip my mind!” LOL!
Aqua, I have stated my stance on here many times, such is no great secret although I must admit to getting fed up with various dudes and gals labeling me as OSA or a Church troll or similar. I am an independent Scientologist. I also have had wonderful gains from auditing and continue to do so. I only really comment when I see nonsenses about the technology. I am probably still wearing one of my old Org hats – haha! And it’s fun as well, well, sometimes people think I am Lucifer in disguise or something but then they have usually misunderstood if not my perhaps sometimes bad choice of words, but definitely intent.
It is interesting however in that a few months back I spotted a sea change in your attitudes – your comments were normally quite mild and unbiased but then I noticed you had become almost “infected” by the general attitude here of “smash anything to do with Scientology” and were becoming more vehement than you were. Now I don’t want to big myself up but that is why I chose the nom de plume of Foolproof because the shit doesn’t filter past my particular fan or in Hubbard’s words on some tape “could get hit with a 16″ shell and it would just bounce off”. And contrary to popular belief here I still try to be fair even to the Church that I left long ago, and state things as I see them, not what the party line wants to hear whichever side of the fence. And why is it expected that making a comment here automatically must mean that one is an anti-Scientologist? I think there are many reading, perhaps sometimes commenting here, in the same lifeboat as me paddling along without making any noise. The thing is, to continue the lifeboat analogy, I don’t want to see the Church of the Titanic sink but rather steering a different course past the icebergs of out-tech and unnecessary harshness and “donations” etc. and so some things commented on here I can agree with. Many I can’t though as in my reality they are nonsenses and so I state what I state.
Mike lets me post comments as he sees me as some sort of antiquated anachronism and a focal point or example of a wicked and heartless Scientologist, but the question is who is manipulating or using who? Haha – sorry Mike, but then you have stated that more or less recently! Controversy is always good journalism after all.
Hope that explains it, or rather “me”.
Mike lets me post comments as he sees me as some sort of antiquated anachronism and a focal point or example of a wicked and heartless Scientologist, but the question is who is manipulating or using who? Haha – sorry Mike, but then you have stated that more or less recently! Controversy is always good journalism after all.
It’s not that I think you are wicked and heartless, never said that. I DO think you are a good example of a fundamentalist scientologist, who thinks you are superior to all who don’t subscribe to your particular line of thought and are astonishingly condescending as all good scientologists are. You have an answer for everything — quoting Hubbard and using his “technology” to demonstrate your superiority. You’re also not antiquated or an anachronism — but you ARE one of the few examples of a real scientologist that readers of this blog have the ability to interact with.
You invariably manage to piss people off, even a gentle soul like Aqua — and that is a skill scientologists seem to have mastered better than most. Arrogance is not pretty anywhere or any time.
The fact that I have an “answer for everything” does not actually mean that I am arrogant but would in the eyes of the person who has stated something that I have countered or is contrary to the general tone here and which is often arrogant beyond belief as they assume they can get away with posting any old nonsense! I could say the same about many of the commenters here when they post about things and pass ad hominem comments about me. So now you are positioning me as “arrogant”, similar now to the last story where you had me aligned with Nazi concentration camps to fit into your assumption about me. (I am not) sorry if my comments grate (on some or even most). I also occasionally get lauding comments so the use of “invariably” about pissing people off is not quite right. And I am perhaps the only one of my ilk bothering to post here, there are probably many like me who don’t want to get involved with the carcass-feeding. Yes, most commenters on here want to do in Scientology, I don’t, but how does that make me arrogant?
As to “pissing off Aqua”, I don’t see from her comment how you could draw that conclusion? She asked me a question quite politely and decently and stated her point of view, to which I replied.
Foolproof, I have no problem at all with you being an Independent Scientologist having wins with the tech. None, absolutely. (And, Mike, btw, I’m not pissed off, but thank you, though 🙂 )
FP, I was curious about whether or not you had lost anyone to disconnection and you answered me readily.
My instinct said you had not because I think if you had you would be kinder to these people here who are experiencing the effects of disconnection. Not necessarily agreeing with them at all, just kinder, more tolerant, because you would be able to look from their viewpoint and see what is their PTP.
Tremendous injustice. Unspeakable betrayal after trust. They are dealing with the comings and going of the overwhelming emotion of missing someone so thoroughly, so completely, that it wipes out every other emotion. Bouts of hopelessness, despair coming and going, that can at times blot out their own natural optimism and desire to survive and do well. They’re dealing with feelings of remorse and regret which they handle by staying very busy but then, in the morning, there’s that pain again, and why even bother to get up, why bother to do anything? Nothing is going to be any good anymore. Its all over, really…. THAT is what they are dealing with, Foolproof. I’d say it qualifies as a PTP, wouldn’t you?
Are you an auditor? If so, have you ever tried to audit someone over a present time problem? Did anyone ever try to audit you when you had a huge PTP? What if, say, you were about to be fired, and frantic as to how you would pay the bills coming in, etc., and you originated this to your auditor, and your auditor replied, “Thank you. I’ll repeat the auditing command…” How would that work for you?
Effectively, you’re doing something similar here. You’re out of comm. However right you may or may not be on your various points about the efficacy of the tech is really not the issue. What’s out is, you’re out of comm.
To continue, you are 100 % right about my comments and opinions about Co$ becoming more “all or nothing”. My viewpoint changed. I used to think that the bathwater could be thrown out and the baby that is the tech saved. I don’t anymore. Much as cancer starts with a few cells that grow and spread, Scientology’s toxic policies have now taken over the organism. Scientology as we know it is pretty much dead.
But truth can’t be killed. Whatever is true and workable in Scientology will survive because it can’t be killed. Someone else, somewhere can rework it, take the good and fashion it into another practice. I don’t know how, but if its true and good and workable and helpful principle, it will survive, and if its a phony, flim-flam piece of worthless woo, it will die. The cult now is totally toxic, as an entity it cannot survive and should not.
I really don’t get your idea that I was being unkind to people who have been “disconnected”. Mostly what I said was an attempt to solve this problem realistically, for both sides of the fence, workable or practical or not. It is of course extremely hard especially for mothers to undergo this so again it is a (false) assumption that I am some sort of hard-nosed die-hard – far from it. I am strangely enough, so tangibly liberal you could shake a stick at my “liberalness”. And perhaps Dave might revise the Disconnection HCOB (he has done so with other HCOBs) and so many of the complaints against the current Church would fade? But after saying that I really don’t want to be drawn into this issue as what I get then are comments such as “FUCK YOU!” as people misinterpret my comments. I also lost a lot of good friends when I left the Church and they were pleading with me to re-join so I know the scene, somewhat. It was the most tragic event of my life, in reality. But then I am not a mother with a son or daughter so that pales against what they must feel. “Unkind”? Not a bit.
As to the “cult” being toxic, no, there are still people getting audited and trained (well, hopefully), although I believe there is a lot of out-tech going on, or far more relatively than when I was there. And Scientology, or rather the technology as such does not need to be “re-worked”. What you are talking about is the wrongly administered administrative side and which has been squirreled, and so which I agree can and should be re-looked at. If Dave made me ED INT with carte blanche I’d solve it in a couple of months!
Foolproof, I do get that you want to help. That’s obvious to me.
What I don’t get is how or why YOU don’t get that for many people who have been extremely hurt by this cult’s disconnection policy, “Scientology” itself – even the word, is a lock on an engram, or on a secondary, or a lock on another very severe lock, or, at the very LEAST, a created lock which is a huge painful PTP. People they love are dead TO THEM except there’s no closure, because they’re NOTdead. Except no comm ever means they are…but they’re not…and on and on.
What I don’t get – and I’m not an auditor, btw, but what I don’t get is how or why you believe you can communicate and offer help to people by not-ising their pain and attempting to explain, however logically or factually, WHY it should NEVER have happened, etc.
You want them to understand WHY. But that’s out gradient, Foolproof.
How about making the pain stop first? How about getting them reunited with their loved ones with those comm lines restored and repaired – FIRST?
“Scientology” is a pain source to these people. GET that! It is perceived as a source of PAIN.
So, to make your point, how about PROVING to them in the actual laboratory of life that it isn’t a source of pain?
Then, once the pain stops, they can be in a condition to discuss WHY it all happened.
Ok, I’ll stop now. None of this is intended to make you wrong, although it kind of does 🙂
And keep posting because you certainly liven things up, that’s for sure. – just don’t be surprised at the blowback!
Nope, all of my relatives “went” with me when I left the Church in the “Great Exodus” of the 1980s. Nothing to do with me being patriarchal or bullying, just we (all) wouldn’t put up with any shit, contrary to what people think about me on here.
Thanks for answering, FP. I’m glad your relatives left the cult with you, with all of you together, united in the solidarity of individual decisions to not put up with any shit. To engender that cognition in the Still Ins today via getting the truth out there about the cult abuses is the purpose of this blog as I’m sure you know.
Well Aqua this is all very fine if true but as I see it there are a large amount of people on here who want to destroy the subject completely and my comments are usually directed at these people with various bats in their belfries who are far less specific than you and some others are. All of my many friends who also left the Church are of the same opinion, but to over-use the phrase of (not) “throwing the baby out with the bath water” is where I am at. Actually the Debbie Cook email says it all in a nutshell and mostly reflects my attitude as well. Her email I think did more to “loosen up” the scene than any other attempt to do so.
FP, understood on all you’ve said and no disagreement with anything you’ve stated above.
Let me put it this way:
If you were a medical doctor, visiting a patient who was just brought to you with a serious, painful, condition, what would be your procedure?
Would you first treat the patient’s pain, then initiate the cure, then cure him, then let him recuperate, all the while communicating to him data on a gradient, as he would ask, as it would contribute to the cure?
Or, with the person in pain, would you insist upon his full understanding of WHY he is now in enormous pain, including his FULL understanding of any health mistakes HE made plus any made by former physicians and caregivers who violated the Hyppocratic Oath of “Do No Harm”, which is why he’s in this painful condition now? All the while assuring him and insisting on his agreement that YOU are the one who is going to cure him because unlike the OTHER medical people who didn’t know what they, YOU do, and WILL cure him…its important that the patient fully get this, immediately…
Think about it.
Hey, FP, I’m just curious: have you read either Russell Miller’s “Barefaced Messiah” or Jon Attack’s “Let’s Sell Them a Piece of Blue Sky?” How do Indies like yourself deal with fact that Hubbard was a chronic liar who lied about himself and his “accomplishments” consistently, most notably his record in the military? Or do you maintain that critics such as Miller and Attack are themselves lying, possibly paid to do so by the evil “psyches?” Or do you simply overlook Hubbard’s lies because the “tech” is so valuable and you get so much out of it? As I said, just curious.
I read both books decades ago so without re-reading them I will regurgitate my thoughts from that time. Miller’s book wasn’t bad in that there were some “facts” that were interesting and various anecdotes about the inner workings of the Scientology network, but nothing that would make me throw a hissy fit and stand outside Orgs waving placards. Atak’s books and data were generally full of blatant nonsense and warped contexts that any Scientologist would regard as such. I read one of his stories recently on Ortega’s blog and came to the same conclusion. I don’t believe that either are or were being paid by the “evil psyches” and are just doing so for other reasons, financial or not or they can’t do a normal job. Miller’s book was definitely more “interesting” i.e. less warped.
As to Hubbard’s military records I have read other reports which tend to support his claims and much of the emphasis on this is, if true, a “so what?” All combatants tend to glorify their deeds or leave out their misdeeds or the actual amount of Jap subs sunk etc. and this sort of thing is like saying to a Christian “well, Christ walked on water but he picked his nose once”. Totally altered importance.
And you have also stated that you are “just curious”, which I don’t think you are. You are posing questions that you think I cannot answer in the hope that it proves some point for you and the coterie here that you seem to belong to. If you are curious, then have you read any of the text books on Dianetics and Scientology (with an unbiased attitude)?
I knew a woman once who said to me that she “didn’t like Hubbard’s writing style” whereupon asking her what she meant and to be specific she started to waffle and bluster and then it came out that she actually hadn’t read any of his books. Obviously she had read such in an invidious blog and was just forwarding this nonsense. Can the same principle be applied to you? Just curious…
Foolproof, you answered my question perfectly; thank you. Your answer was pretty much what I expected it would be.
I’ve read a few snippets of “Dianetics;” nothing that made me want to read any more. I’ve listened to a lot more of Hubbard’s various talks and lectures, the general underlying theme of which is always: ‘I’m smart and everyone else is stupid.’ Yes, that’s definitely biased me from ever wanting to read anything he wrote.
I’ve noticed that your m.o. here mainly consists of ad hominen attacks of one sort or another. No doubt about it; you’re a bonafide scientologist.
So it seems I have pegged you to a tee eh? i.e. someone who really knows Jack Shit about Scientology, has never had any experiences either good or bad with the subject, has never had any auditing or done any courses, who professes to know the underlying theme of lectures when you probably misunderstood most of the jargon used within the first few minutes of listening (most tapes are not for general public edification), and yet claims to realize that Hubbard is condescending towards his audience, which I never recall from any of his lectures, but then I am familiar with the jargon and the practice and Hubbard’s “style”. Sounds similar then to the lady I referenced elsewhere who had never read a book but professed not to “like Hubbard’s writing style”.
As for ad hominem attacks by me please refer me to them, perhaps Wynski now and then but then after his attacks on me he can’t complain and mostly it is just jibing as I know he will never change his mind and I think he mostly takes it in his stride. My comments are directed at the (false) data imparted by others, not them personally. When I upset their little games by presenting another viewpoint then I have been constantly personally attacked here. Some people even dare to label me as a “Scientologist” (gasps from the audience as they run screaming from the hall)! So your clever statement of “I’ve noticed that your M.O. here…” doesn’t mean that people will believe you or that there is any fact behind it, nice try though.
Why don’t you then blow your trumpet somewhere else? Why don’t you try the Moonies or the Catholic church? Plenty of material there, perhaps?
Foolproof, I was just curious. I posed it not because I thought you couldn’t answer but because you might not want to. I used careful language in asking because the possibility occurred to me that you might not want to reveal that info on the blog.
In answer to your inferred questions, I was in for 27 years. I’ve read all of Hubbard’s books, many congresses, lectures,etc. I did a lot of courses including KTL, LOC and the Data Series. I was a good student. I actually liked clearing words. I wanted to auditor train but got side tracked (money wise) with straight donos. I’ve read all the Green Vols. I did the Vol O course. I was never staff but I knew policy, which in the end I saw being jettisoned right and left.
You are not being helped by the organization, Foolproof. What is helping you as an Indie is something else. You can call it, “Scientology” or anything you like. What is helping you is not this organization which you and your relatives had the wisdom to leave. What’s helping you and what you love is not toxic – “The Church of Scientology” is toxic and deserves to die.
You’ll notice I’m making a distinction between the subject and its healthy helpful principles and the official organization, which is now toxic.
You may believe it (the official organization) can be saved; I do not.
My take is, long live any and all of the healthy, helpful principles, and call them “whatever”so that people don’t shrink in horror from them as they do now.
Call them anything except “Scientology”. After all, as Shakespeare said, “What’s in a name? A rose by any other name will smell as sweet” One of my major KTL wins – the name is not the thing.
Aqua – I am very sorry but it seems you think my answer above was directed to you, it wasn’t at all but was directed at Bixntram but came over that way as I couldn’t directly reply to Bixntram’s message. Sorry, I should have at least given a name at the start of my ahem – message. I don’t quite know what to say here, for once, well, apart from sorry again.
FoolProof, you are an absolute idiot and have proved to be a stable one at that! You can now go and attest to that state, except your needle is obviously dirty! So, maybe some of that OT auditing can help……..as if!
Thanks Ed! Yes, I am not PTS, (in Hubbard’s words then not “rolly coasty”) – had that rundown a long time ago. As to the auditing, do it every day and it does help to keep me “Foolproof”.
Good story, but it left out some frightening details. If you say ‘no’ to Scientology service, they will send staff to your work, your home, and even try to meet you at your bank to coerce you into paying for service. If you are on Scientology services, Sea Org members will often be waiting, specifically for you, outside the course room to recruit you for staff or the Sea Org. If you are a public in good standing, Sea Org staff may periodically show up at your house unannounced.
These are the tactics used when you are in ‘Good-Standing’ with your Mission, Org, or IAS. Same tactics that I imagine the intelligence community may use on targets put onto a watch list. Imagine the tactics used when you are not in ‘Good-Standing’. #1984
At one point the narrator is “Rick Shade”
Later in the writing (but actually taking place before) – it’s “Rick Lee”
… mistake or purposeful intrigue?
And now I have to wait a week!
I’m hooked.
Oops!
The book is really interesting. Looking to reading more! BTW, I have NOT received your blog in my email since Friday, March 16. Just letting you know.
Good job Terra! Maybe eliminate the ‘f’ word. Great description of the love-bombing that goes on.
“Great description of the love-bombing that goes on.”
Seems more like sex-bombing to me. I think of love-bombing as having a real sense of community, comradery, acceptance, and affirmation that is revoked if you disobey the group. But I’m sure sex-bombing is at least as effective.
I don’t mind the f-bombs. Seems in character.
I want to know if Joan is alive. She must be dead, right? Are we supposed to assume that she’s dead or are we supposed to want to read the rest to find out? I hate suspense. I actually read recaps of suspenseful shows in advance so I can prepare myself if necessary and close my eyes for the gory parts. But I do want to read the rest of this story.
One time I watched “Saturday Night Fever” or whatever that Travolta movie was called on network tv with the expletives deleted. I found it more pleasant to watch that way. Expletives draw attention to themselves. I lived in Salt Lake City for a few years and some of the Mormon fellows on construction sites would occasionally exclaim, “The flippin thing!”
Also, and this is meant as a constructive criticism. People reading novels like to identify with the good guy which is Rick. Rick’s foul mouth (or thinking process as the case may be) indicates he’s had a rather “low life” upbringing if you want to describe it that way. That’s not a character type a lot of people would like to identify with.
Hollywood producers and directors alway fancy themselves so brazen for using the “f” word. It’s been done to death by now. But the tinsel town nabobs are not as brave as they think they are. There’s a four-letter word you will never, ever hear spoken in a Hollywood movie. You will still hear it in Brittish gutter slang, though.
Oh, dear god.
Did you guys see the new post today at Tony’s? Arnie Lerma shot and injured his wife, then killed himself.
Unbelievably tragic.
Yes, I saw. He was on powerful mind altering drugs due to back pain and surgery on his back. Not atypical unfortunately. Hard drugs and violence go hand in hand with human males.
That’s the part that has me thrown. I mean, I took painkillers for years (before and after back surgery and I’ll admit to taking much more than I should have, many times) and it never made me feel like a lunatic who wanted to kill myself or someone else. It just seems way too extreme to be the sole cause of what happened.
I have no idea what he was going through, but something else had to be very wrong. Just my opinion, though.
Katherine, that is because you are a female. AND it only happens to a small % of users. Every single mass shooter in USA has had a history of a certain type of powerful drugs, prescription or street. All male. The first such person was the Texas college shooter in the 60’s. The last two were the Miami school shooter and the Las Vegas shooter.
Get rid of the drugs and you have no mass shootings. At least non-gangland, apolitical types.
I was WAITING for someone to blame it on psychs and drugs…. Almost have heard it in that comment.”Get rid of the drugs and you have no mass shootings”….
So SIMPLE, definitive, and WRONG! Particularly since there was nothing in what I read to indicate that the drugs caused him to do the deed.
NOW, we just need someone to say that his O/Ws caught up with him, making him paranoid and unsane. He had good, sane reasons to be paranoid…. Just look at what he had withstood that was well documented. Of COURSE “they” were out to get him: OSA wasn’t about to stop in HIS lifetime,IOW. Sadly, OSA won that war against a guy who only committed the crime of disseminating what he saw as the TRUTH about a criminal organization representing itself as a religion.
I’m really looking forward to reading the upcoming chapters. This pulled me right in and held me.
Ten years ago in a Santa Barbara shopping block, there was a coast and foggy skies, and I hunkered down in a van while mulling through my escape.
That was time, place, form, and event. I heard that a story reads better when it goes: form, place, time, and event.
A blue packing blanket infused with remnant particles of sawdust lay below me, absorbing my sweat and worry. The interior metallic walls of the Ford van acted as a shield from the world, and more specifically, the consumers coming to and fro this particular shopping establishment. It must have been at least ten years ago when I woke from being dazed, confused and on the very precipice of death ( it seemed) in a Starbucks body odor stench and cheese danish tartered existence of hunkering down day after day, out of sight, and out of the foggy coastal skies and occasional rain… To face my greatest fear at that time.
? Just passing that on.
In any case, your story reads fast and I love that! Very clear and not muddy. Only personally I’ve come to not like the repetitive use of the f word (maybe from watching the movie Demolition)
Terra, this is beautiful….like a sunset on upper Del Playa on the bluffs above IV Beach.
You have a very visual style of writing that I like. I can readily picture the scenes that you describe.
You, of course, are the captain of your own creative ship and can dismiss any suggestions that don’t fit with your vision. You did ask for feedback and I’m just going to shoot from the hip with a wild idea that occurred to me. I can see this as a graphic novel, with conversations and scenes illustrated. I can imagine a collaboration with Regraded Being on this.
You are a good story teller , Terra.
And I love a good story.
Nice job, Terra. Compelling! Excellent writing. Look forward to the next in the series.
Thought I’d share a Sunday funny about COS TV.
http://wgntv.com/2018/03/17/the-one-scientology-joke-its-ok-for-tomasulo-to-make/
An enjoyable read. Not too much jargon. I’m worried about Joan. No house
Phone down there?
Last name Shade, turns to last name Lee, later on.
Great style, I’m hooked!
Didnt see this b4 I posted.
Apologies.
Pretty good start; a decent peek into how the first days “in” can feel, but I’d love to have some indication of where you’re intending to go. I’m wondering if you might be “burying the lead”, in other words. Is this a sympathetic description of what SCN is like, or a warning of its dangerous practices? I see elements of both, already.
So, so well written and captivating. And of course so reminiscent of my time “in”. Like the reg telling you it is only your reactive mind that is forcing you to not give him money”. Publish it and I’ll buy it immediately.
Terra, I like the way you write! It’s fluid and easily keeps the readers attention! I am assuming this is a historical fiction piece, right?
I am looking forward to the next installment.. .. ?
Excellent!! Cannot wait to read the rest and am worried about Joan……hope she makes it. Keep going.
https://fractalenlightenment.com/41081/culture/healing-purification-effects-sweat-lodge-ceremony
Been around for a long time, a “Religious Purification” of the mind, body & soul. They simply trade up the “sweat lodge” for a sauna….
I did the purification rd. In ’86 ….I had three gen. Anaesthetics operations before hand and a near death blow to my body as a child….long story short the purification cracked my case and it saved my bacon. I remember one evening I had to stay overnight at the Mission because I was passing through or running out through a miasma/deliciousness of such magnitude I thought I was going to die. In the end after 24 days I felt revivified and bright as a penny.
I meant miasma/deliriousness
Is that a movie?
Sweat Lodge gone wrong…………interesting but very sad reading…
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/43501833/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/t/self-help-guru-convicted-sweat-lodge-deaths/#.Wq7WoUxFzVg
I was never in scientology. But I am familiar with the detox process using a sauna. It actually seems common to me. My parents graduated from high school in 1967. My dad was aware of the process but never a scientologist. My whole college team was aware of the process and many used it. There are no doubt that people tweak the process in different ways, but the concept has been around for some time.
Saunas are great! Haven’t been in one in a while, but after a workout, jumping in the sauna for 15 minutes: fantastic! 15 minutes is about my limit, though; any longer than that and it stops being fun.
And then, bix, after 15 minutes in the hot sauna, a REALLY cold shower! Whoo!!! does that get the blood circulating. Dreadful shock to the old system though so don’t do it if you have a weak heart. Sometimes I go back in the sauna and do another few minutes, getting really hot again, and then the icy shower again…my version of what the Danish do, i.e. rolling in the snow after a sauna – VERY healthy!
BOLO, it was a “common” bit of hippie-boomer-“new age” popular pseudoscience, just the sort of thing that Hubbard took from and that Scientology tapped in to.
Saunas and sweat lodges may have some minor physical or psychological benefits, and make people feel better (perhaps largely due to the placebo effect), but they don’t “detox.”
“In fact, forcing your body to reach elevated temperatures and not consuming an adequate amount of water can actually impair your bodies detox system and cause you to hold onto MORE water and toxins.
The kidneys and liver are the organs responsible for detoxing your body (not the sweat glands). They accomplish their important task during your time in the loo.
According to Donald Smith (a professor of environmental toxicology at UC Santa Cruz, who studies treatments for metal poisoning) almost all toxic metals in the body are excreted through urine or feces. Less than 1 percent are lost through sweat .” https://www.huffingtonpost.com/melissa-edmonds/does-sweating-release-tox_b_8372452.html
It occurs to me that, as if with a lot of similar things, any benefits may just be because the real effect is that the sauna forces people to drink a lot of water, thus possibly flushing the body though the kidneys – so the same benefits might be had just by going on a regimen of increased water intake and trips to the “loo.” But that hasn’t ever been subject to proper scientific research, and the burden is on sauna proponents to prove that it somehow works in a way that goes against what is known from research (as per Prof. Smith, above) about how the human body actually excretes toxins (they will have measured toxins in sweat, just not specifically under sauna conditions).
A couple of times in the past when I took niacin my body flushed all over except in my midsection which was always covered with swim trunks or shorts. If I had continued taking higher doses of niacin maybe the flushing would have ceased. High doses of other vitamins to which the body is unaccustomed might cause similar effects. This might be a reason scientologists believe they are “running out” substances.
If doing the Purif is currently a prerequisite to auditing then thousands of people have done it without observable injury. It would be getting past another hurdle on their path to total freedom and an aspect of the prison of belief.
Richard, I experienced something similar. During my first Purif (I did it twice) my body was flushed all over except for above the waist and below the waist covered by a 2 piece bathing suit – a VERY modest 2 piece btw the pattern of which I recognized from a suit I’d worn for two summers in in my teens. It was dark blue and had a rather high scooped neck (think Annette Funicello in those movies with Frankie Avalon) and one in which I experienced THE worst sunburn of my life – the worst. I have the type of skin that should NEVER be in the sun, but in those days, who knew? Anyway, that sunburn – the lobster red, the fever, chills, afterward – that sunburn that I got at my local swimming pool at the age of 16 – there it was, again! Twenty years later.
Sorry if this upsets anyone. I’m making no claims. This was my experience. So, go nuts if you have to, I can handle it. Because this was my experience – emphasis on the word “my”. And I’m communicating it. So, sue me 🙂
I think it’s science. For some reason niacin causes a reaction from previous skin damage from the sun. It also produces a prickly burning type sensation. If I took some niacin today the same thing would happen. I don’t recall why I took niacin in the past, maybe some experimentation with vitamin supplements, but it was more than once with the same reaction. High doses of vitamin B give me a headache, also from experience. I take a multiple vitamin when I think of it. The One-A-Day is in the kitchen on a shelf.
I looked up niacin in wikipedia. It mentions flushing and itching or tingling as a side effect and some (beneficial) effects on cholesterol. There was no mention of any studies regarding using niacin for addressing or “running out radiation” which might be mentioned as a supposed benefit of the purif. I’m not sure about that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niacin
Scientific tests have shown (for maybe 70 years) that niacin causes the capillaries in the skin to dialate and cause a red flush. No prior sun burn needed.
I’m on a tangent here but I might as well finish up and get off it. I spent some time as a part time staff member at the Las Vegas Org. I recall reading some of Hubbard’s stuff mentioning radiation. Someone at the Vegas org told me Hubbard decided to avoid Vegas since it was “too hot with radiation” from the nuclear testing in the 1950s. Just a story, no authentification.
Answer to Wynski here: Scientific tests eh? So can you explain why don’t the bikini or swim-suit covered parts of the body go red and tingle? Unless the selected test persons were all members of a nudist colony? Yes, that could explain it…
Fool, when I was a DofP I saw plenty of red on those parts of bodies. All the time in fact. On my body too.
Did YOU run the Purif? What ARE you insanely babbling on about now?
Fool, as usual science has the REAL data. The damage to the skin caused by sunburn forces it to try to recover and repair itself by making new capillary vessels.
THAT is why niacin flush is MORE in areas of past sunburn. It has NOTHING to do with radiation “running out”. Sunburn also bursts capillaries.
Having nothing to do with scientology: I vaguely remember a story in the news some years ago a death caused in a sweat lodge run by some new-age guru in California. The Purif Rundown might be better-labeled as the Purif Breakdown.
Hello Bix Please Read the article link….”sweat lodge gone wrong”…..3 deaths due to the use of the sweat lodge…
I just started reading the story and haven’t finished it yet. Other things to do for a bit so I’m making this comment now to see how it fits when I finish the story.
I can’t give an exact date from memory so I’ll say this occurred in 1980. I was co-auditing on the grades when the “Dianetic Drug Rundown” came out. It was deemed a priority and my co-auditor and I were pulled off the grades to pursue it. The purification sweat program was not yet up and running so I escaped that. Lucky me. I split scn soon after the drug rundown and “Dianetic Clear”.
So far it’s another anti scientology proclamation. Along with the realistic out points like tricky sales pressure (which can be resisted) and overdoses of vitamins, benefits such as introspecting on the past which exist in all therapies are twisted to look like negatives.
Terra admits he had issues in life he wanted to handle. Let’s see if he gets around to admitting he gained any benefits from the subject. So far there are excuses as to “why he did stupid things.”
Credit where credit is due and Terra is willing to open his writing to public criticism. Hat’s off to you on that, Terra!
“Let’s see if he gets around to admitting he gained any benefits from the subject. ”
Why would he if he didn’t Richard?
What a strange comment.
“Let’s see if he gets around to admitting he gained any benefits from the subject”.
You assume that a person must have “wins”. What if he “admits” that he didnt?
Is Terra under some kind of obligation to say he benefited from $cientology if he didn’t?
I have no idea what he’ll eventually say about all this. But it seems a little strange to imply that “another anti-$ci” story is a bad thing, considering what this organization does to people.
I left scn long before Miscavige took over. Whenever possible for the purpose of discussion I separate the subject itself from what’s left of the current organization. Terra’s Saturday articles usually take some aspect of the subject and degrade it. To me it looks like this story is heading in that direction but it’s only the first installment. Someone spending YEARS in ANY subject and not thinking they were learning something or getting any benefit would be strange.
You didn’t answer the question but changed it when challenged (typical behavior of a cult member). “THINKING” one got something and ACTUALLY getting something are different.
So, once again, why would you expect someone to admit something that wasn’t true,if it wasn’t?
Instead of us arguing based on our own speculations or assumptions it might be a good idea to give Terra the opportunity to respond to the following two very pointed questions from us:
Yo Terra 🙂
1) During your time in Scientology do you consider that you personally received any benefits from the study or practice of any of it?
2) If the answer to the above question is “yes”, please summarize for us what you would today consider these benefits to have been.
Thank you for whatever you may be inclined to do so as to assist us in chewing on this bone, Terra 🙂
Sincerely,
Aqua.
I choose not to “list my wins”. For myself and I think for most people it was a series of small new realizations if you want to call them that instead of successes or cognitions or whatever.
A discussion of “brainwashing” came up on another blog and here’s what I wrote:
Here’s how I would rewrite that paragraph for my own purposes without any attempt to correct Pluvo’s idea:
“Indoctrinated” is a better description, IMO, than “brainwashed”. It’s the decision-making according to the basis of former information and experiences and mindset mixed with the indoctrination and absorbance of new information and experience. How far the decision-making is influenced to follow KSW and “Command Intention” is individually different.
Going back almost 40 years and further tracking how I came to believe everyone should be a scientologist is not a “high interest item” for me (sciospeak is fun sometimes.) In it’s simplicity a LOT of scn made sense in the beginning. Body – Mind – Spirit, Analytical mind – Reactive mind – Somatic mind, Memories as Mental Pictures. There’s a long list of such things which might lead me to follow Hubbard/scn on his Bridge and as Gib notes, Hubbard was a master at rhetoric and persuasion.
“tricky sales pressure (which can be resisted)”
Er, how would you know, Richard?
bixntram – I saw no high pressure sales in the registrar signing Rick up for the Purif. She was a good salesperson doing her job as a reg. Rick said he couldn’t afford it but he had money available on his credit card and he agreed to use it. And by the way, she may very well have honestly believed in what she was telling Rick.
In my day the registrars were all very nice people. They used the same reasoning in saying that if I didn’t go right onto my next step in scn the bank, my reactive mind, would come back in and I could or would lose any progress I’d made to which I somewhat agreed at that time. If I absolutely couldn’t afford the next step I might give a down payment and give a promise that I’d complete paying as soon as possible so he or she could say they’d done their job.
All registrars today are portrayed as greedy hard sell never take no for an answer people which they may very well be in this era of scn.
Very nice! One edit: Chapter 4, paragraph 4: change “swim trunks” to “swimsuits” so as to include your trunks and Joan’s one-piece.
Noted. Thanks.
I noted once, Terra. But, nobody paid attention to me.
Duly noted, OSD.
Great! Even tho none of the Scieno technicalities were new to me this was a real page turner.
I’m curious about when this takes place. Something along the lines of “It was five years ago that I first set foot in… “, Or “It was on a bright day in the fall of XXXX that I first…” would help me set it in time (And also give a clue as to whether the story arc is likely to cover a few years or a few decades).
Just a suggestion. But the story’s great and I look forward to the next 5 Sunday’s reading.
Good suggestions, Graham. Thanks.
LOVE this new series! And I’m with everyone else, dang we have to wait a whole week for the next installment?! TC you have a way of writing that pulls someone right in, like we’re sitting there with you! Can’t wait to read more!
Thank you Mike for hosting it here! I’m sure many who’ve been in find resonance in the story. As a never-in, it makes it so much more understandable how they play on those needs/wants we have in just the right moment to keep people in and spending! I’m riveted!
Good start Terra. The narrative drew me along. Eagerly await the next installment …
Excellent!
Looking forward to next week’s installment
TC, Reads like chapters out of my life.
Great read TC. Do we have to wait another week for more?
I don’t want to wait until next weekend. I want to read the rest asap. I’m already hooked into the story. And I’m worried about Joan.
I know!! I thought we would find out today what happened to her. What a cliffhanger!!
Very captivating! I didn’t know you were so much younger than I either. One of the few of your generation that wasn’t born into scamology or had a family member in before you.