Story time....get your jammies on and your popcorn...
The good times....Getting in in the 70's. Dedicated, happy people. Hard TRs. Realizing that the only thing I had never been told to do before was to do absolutely nothing. Finding myself. Co-auditing objectives. Going exterior. Feeling like I could do anything. Joining staff among so many highly trained auditors. Being told I was valuable. Feeling like I belonged. People blowing smoke up my ass. Getting auditing. Lots of Dianetics. A well and happy human being. Feeling the futility of there being only 10 new starts that week but knowing it mattered. Fun parties. Becoming an 'executive' with very little training. Feeling like you found "it" after reading and searching for an answer in your youth as to why you felt so aware and felt so different. Beam me right up, baby! Learning the word MEST and finding it automatically positioned you outside of it. (At least then it did.) Knowing you were a pioneer and ignoring public opinion decades before the big IRS settlement "legitimatized" the cofs. (Or so they thought.) Not getting paid often but every time you looked you had a half-price intensive "on account". $312.50! Moonlighting. Approved CSW for full time training. Scurrying to get a seat in the academy because it was so crowded. Getting back in there before break ended to guard "your" favorite dictionaries. Learning there was no mistake you could make that could not be corrected. Knowing that any case was better opened than left closed. Aspiring to be trained enough to help. Toughness. Friendliness. having a Keeper of the Tech (KOT) on staff. Auditing anywhere. Auditing anyone. Internships in checksheet time. Respecting CSs. Passing audio tapes. Co-auditing the bridge. Feeling proud. Knowing I would never be lonely again, having found so many "terminals." Knowing I'd have a family of my own, something I was always sure I would never do having had a fairly childhood-less childhood, because now it was safe to do. Having a religion when I'd always been dead set against organized religion due to many things I'd experience, read about and learned in my early life. How lucky was I?!
The influence I was under from a scientologist while I was at a very young, yet adult age was insidious and as much as I have claimed responsibility for it, it ruined and steered my life's direction for many years. I broke free of the hold and damn if it didn't happen again! I should have broken free of scn. as that would have broken the influence but there is no way I would have seen that at the time...or for a long time to come. Wild horses couldn't have dragged me away... So, from the frying pan into the fire I went! Not trying to be vague but these situations are too personal and hurtful to talk about even anonymously. I am not looking to be a victim, but in scn., by design, you cannot be a victim. So, no matter what happens (to you) you are responsible for it. Fully. I tried to work with that.
I remained full of hope as "Life is in you today and you make your own tomorrow", right?....
Tomorrow came... Over the next 37 years this is where I/we end up: Heavy ethics cycles. Micro-managed disconnections. Investigations. Secret KRs that you don't get a copy of?!! Gestapo methods of control. Fear. Intimidation. No open communication with your loved ones. Always on guard about what you say or what impression you make. You can never be out-PR to someone else and inhibit their treacherous climb up the Bridge to Hell. Being held in captivity. No barbed wire. No walls. Well, actually there were walls. But no locks on the doors. Just security cameras, walkie-talkies, spies for "bad indicators," orders, mental restraints/mental straight-jackets, the promise of a response to your query very soon..or your request to leave, the new question from the cs that had already been answered a thousand times before and now makes you lose all chance of getting home on time for something important, the D of P interview that proves no one really read your folder, the stupidity, the stops on your bridge, the senseless interrogations that make YOU feel criminal when it is clearly not you, my friends. Sounds like not a big deal to some, maybe....because we were all conditioned to it, used to it, had to put up with it. Didn't dare counter it. Unless you never want to see your friends again. But wake up!!! Is this not blackmail?? Nothing was more important...your job, your spouse, your children, your family, your finances, your time, your income, your mental health, your spirituality, your very well-being....than YOU being controlled. Nothing. Well there was the paying. OK, so, CON-trol and paying. Yep. As long as that's happening, your're golden! And when you're golden you just forget about the rest. For awhile...
There is an incredible push for people to join org staff after OTVIII. (or at any level but particularly any OTs or anyone trained. God help you if you're trained!!) Being pressured beyond belief to join staff. Being double-teamed by some outside missionaires screaming at you what a low-life you are. Basically, people you never met before, telling you they know you better than you know yourself. And I told them so! The whole environment went quiet. You could hear a pin drop. I screamed. No one could say anything but an apology to me. And then I walked out. Does anyone know what it takes to hold your position and say no? Months and months of outright harassment. Literally thinking I would be better off dead than alive. Seeing no way out of this. Somehow I was able to see it through and see it to an end. But for what? It won't stop! It won't stop because I stood up for a minute. It will go on and on and on to the next person. The machine needs to be disassembled and retired. Seeing others join staff under extreme duress and then seeing them pretend everything is fine as the nightmare begins to unravel! The badgering, the heavy handed ethics, the lying, the tricking, the conniving bull shit used to influence people to do DM's bidding and enslave people. All the off-policy actions. ...the succumb of well-intentioned, once good hearted, sane individuals into the behavior that was created by this push. I saw scientology take on the valence of its purported nemesis, psychiatry, at it's worst. Seeing good staff members punished for months and sent away for sec checks only to return and grovel back into good graces...but did they resign staff contracts? Hell, no! Not so much! Many jumped through whatever hoops they had to in order to remain "in good standing" and got the hell out of there! Some few continue to contribute from the sidelines so they still have good PR yet are fairly out of harm's way. There are auditors who won't audit anymore. They will not subject themselves to the unsafe environment that has been created in the sacrilegious name of "standard tech." Standard, my ass. Auditors are not needed to deliver the bread and butter of what is or was scn. and what people may actually want. They are expendable. The good ones crushed. "Old timers" treated with disdain. Many of those have kowtowed to their re-education. But they are cast aside as now there are fundraisers. You will feel just as good if you donate if not better than after a session! Pardon my sarcasm. But writing this brings out the truth, the humor (have we seen any of this yet??), the bitterness, the tears, the anger as well as more insight as a result of writing it.
Disconnection....whom has this NOT affected?? Whether it's personal, on another flow, someone's saga you heard about and didn't agree with. We have all put up with it. And, yes, yes, yes, it has affected me, my family, my spouse, my children. It was the elephant in the room. We rolled with the punches. Put up with it. Made the best of it. For decades! The disconnection itself was "not minded" by the person disconnected from so it was easier to justify it. However, the enforcement of it closed the door to all communication or peace-making or decision making that could have been and could have led to better choices for all and much less psychological damage to those involved, which included children who had no say in this. Life was not able to take a natural course. I made the choices because I didn't have a choice. Oh, but I'm being a victim again! NO ONE outside of scn. sees the trap here. And those in scn. can't see the trap because it was "obviously" the right choice. Did I/we make this tomorrow?? In my wildest dreams of youth I would never have imagined this!
So, who the hell would get this?? Well, I know you do! And I am more grateful than you know.
All is well that ends well and my story, this part of it, ends with me pulling back from the brink just in time not not lose absolutely everything.
This is my very first post anywhere.There is more to my story. I actually wrote seven pages (much of it commentary) but with unprecedented restraint, decided I could not possibly do that to you nice folk!
Besides, you probably don't have enough pop-corn made. I realize some of this was a rant. Some was carefully, if unskillfully, edited and some was polite and some was perhaps whacky. For once I don't apologize as I am realizing that's who we are at the end of this road. Human beings.
A lot of things rolled into one. So much of it having been negated for so long. This is my first attempt at writing something after lurking for a year and it was not easy to do (took me days and many tears, many big sighs and some laughs , too. But it had to be my next step. I took lurking as far as I could. I got to grow fond of many of you and enjoyed the diversity of personalities and opinions and the tiffs and the love and the silliness and the fun and the seriousness as well. I love the Anons. Soooo love you!!! And all the exes who protest and speak out. And every single person who only tells a story. It is so valuable to the next one lurking. It is most certainly causing a chain reaction. So as you say, moar stories!!! I know your lurkers must LIVE for the next story, as did I....so put yours here!
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