Mrs. Feral and I decided we wanted to communicate to our old friends about what we had learned and what was important to us in the last year, even if the CofS believes in disconnection and ex-communication I don't.
So I'm posting this letter that we sent to several of our friends, (close to two hundred actually) and contacts who are still in the CofS at this time.
On reflection a Christmas letter was not the best vehicle, maybe a "Happy new year" letter would have been better. Still it got a very strong response, most of it extremely positive, we enclosed pictures of the kids too.
Merry Christmas from the Mackeys,
The past twelve or so months have been pretty busy for us, Vicky completed OT VII, Courtney started mainstream school, we had a baby boy - his name is Jack and we are over the moon about him and so is his sister. We have also reorganised our lives in a very big way.
We imagine that some of you may have heard that we have fallen into some terrible abyss. The truth is that we are both very well and extremely happy. It may be true that we have crossed a forbidden line, we have in fact parted from Scientology. This is not something that we have done lightly. We put a massive investment of ourselves into Scientology. We were both IAS patrons, cornerstone members, human rights advocates as well as ex staff and OT committee members, putting thousands of hours into field work over the years, up to the time when our daughter needed our full support.
Since making our decision, we have also seen the dark side of the Church's "PR", as well as OSA. For example, we have heard that we are part of "anonymous", we are attacking the church, we have asked for a full refund, we have spread a rumour that the church murdered two children and that we are declared. It has even been implied in a line of questioning that we are being paid by psychs. Very funny. But none of this is true.
When we made our decision to leave in May this year, we were very overt and up front with the church. We have not 'attacked' the church in any way, and we have asked for a repayment of our unused money that was languishing on our accounts, this is not a refund. Our friend Scooter was told by OSA that we spread this rumour about his kids, when he found out what was actually said, he looked further into the lies being told by OSA and now he has also left the Church. We are not declared and are not in the employ of psychs or any pharmaceutical company.
The truth is, after Vicky finished OTVII and got the "EP" check of six intensives, which included yet another sec check, we kind of thought " well, is that it ?" After 12 and 15 years on the level at a cost of about $800,000.00 we were wondering why we had not achieved anything like the OT abilities that we had expected.
We were prompted to look at the melee that had been going on around the Church by CCHR, they wanted scios to back a statement that Mark Hanna had made on an ABC chat room. We kind of pulled a string to get to the bottom of an alarming report. We discovered, and had confirmed a great deal of data about the Church that was pretty disturbing. We also discovered that the stats promoted by the Church are a huge stretch of the truth.
For instance, we have been led to believe that there are 10,000,000 scios worldwide and that the advent of the ideal orgs has increased it from the previous 6,000,000 that the Church said was active prior to that. The thing is, worldwide census shows no more than 100,000 scios, that includes children and freezoners (squirrels). Recent apostates from the IAS tell of no more than about 40,000 members.
We also found a staggeringly high amount of ex-Int management staff, these guys came out of Int utterly disabused of the idea that Scientology was the solution to the world's troubles, in fact they tell heart wrenching stories of enforced abortions, endless days of work without sleep on beans and rice and other human rights abuses unparalleled in the western world, all within the Int base. The vast majority leave the Church for good.
Scientology has not and is not gaining the support that we thought it was, through it's policies of disconnection and fair game it has alienated the very public we sought to clear and no wonder with words like "wog" and "raw meat" to describe them. The Gallup poll in the US showed this with it's net positive / negative view of religion poll.
That
poll rated catholics, methodists and anglicans as between 34 and 45
fundamentalist Christians at 10
Muslims were rated as -17
atheists -32
Scientologists -45
That was a shock, how can that be if we are using LRH PR tech?
This didn't jibe with everything we saw at the Int events, the world greeting the tech with open arms and all that. We looked further.
We recently heard that ALL the libraries in Australia were "finished", that is they had their complete sets of 18 basic books. This has been a huge campaign and to date $126,000,000.00 has been raised from the public to fund this. Another ex, Scooter, got onto the
data base for libraries in Australia, there are about 830 libraries, and if the basics were in all of them that would come to nearly 15,000 recent editions of LRH books in Aust. We found just 178 books, (these were 2007 editions) we even got on the phones and went into a few libraries to spot check them against the entries on their data bases. So where are the other 99% of the books ? In the past we have personally donated $20,000.00 to a library campaign. Those books were sent back too. If you like you can read about that in Kevins full
story of his time in Scientology.
We also found out that the six month sec checks were in violation to C/S series 73RB, which is pretty clear on the subject. There were several people on OT VII who tried to get this matter sorted out and got declared, they were Greg and Debra Barnes as well as Virginia and Mike McClaughery. After reading this issue we got to see why you don't interupt an auditing level every six months to do a sec check or another rundown like FPRD.
link (there are four interviews)
Scientology was meant to be the way to freedom, after Vicky spent 12 years and Kevin, 15 on Solo Nots, the whole time we were supposed to be contributing to the forward motion of Scientology as well as training, donating to the IAS and managing our 3 to 6 sessions per day as well as our six month checks. It occurred to us while we were also trying to help our disabled daughter to have some sort of meaningful life that Scientology was not contributing to our survival. When we stopped we felt like we had pulled a 200lb parasite off our backs, the phones stopped ringing and the extraordinary demands for time and money ceased, we felt we had achieved a freedom by leaving that we could not have whilst in the Church or through the practice of Scientology.
We recently learned a new term that has been very handy. It is "cognitive dissonance" that is when some one holds two or more contradictory concepts in their mind at the same time, well the amount of cognitive dissonance that we have disabused ourselves of is frightening. For example trying to attain spiritual freedom whilst relinquishing your physical and even mental freedom and even your sovereignty over your own life choices to stay on the route. Or to follow a course of mental health while watching dozens of people fall off due to going type three. Or to be the champions of human rights while the very organisation that the program springs from is one of the biggest human rights abusers in the free world in it's Sea Org.
link
LRH says that one of the things you can do with an undesirable valence is wear it, that way you don't have to look at it. Well taking off the beingness of Scientologist showed to us the flaws in the reasoning these were flaws that we dare not consider while in the group.
So that's the story, we are very happy for any one to call us and question our views or to get data verified
I hope you all have a merry Christmas and a great and happy new year.
Originally Posted by Zinjifar
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