Hi
This may jump about a bit and be disjointed or repititions this has been a crazy thing to write and edit.
I left the SO ages ago in 1996 soon after the GAT event I was the FBO HAPI after being trained on the ATC at CLO UK AOSH for ages and ages. I originally joined staff at Birmingham Org when Lucy James was the ED and got sent for training to AOSH a week or so after walking in through the door. I was recruited by INCOMM to roll out the installation of the computer systems whilst functioning as an Flag Banking Officer for Birmingham Org, or so I thought, I actually ended up as a SO member on garrison mission at HAPI Scotland.
I look back at my time at Saint Hill now and feel that I loved it, I knew though at the time it was terrible. The crushing homesickness that was always there is no longer recalled as a feeling only as an idea. I remember training with some great people and great friends as well as an ever growing awareness of Scientology gradually I got used to this new life.
EPF for me was a lot of fun, if one ignored the back ache from the cheap bunk beds, the lack of sleep and the crap food. I got a lot out of it. I guess I like work and study. It was fun. We were lucky to be in Walsh Manor. My fellow EPFers were great company and it was nice to belong. Being in the SO was a time when I let go of my homesickness and dedicated myself to my circumstances. I remember a lot of humour and for the most part everyone really got on. It went really wrong once the CMO took over the Finance office and when I would eventually be sent to HAPI instead of BHM.
In the SO I had the dubious pleasure of meeting Miscavage whilst on the EPF and on study in the CLO He was short. Not only that but I felt he was nasty. He reminded me of the sort of lout that if you make eye contact with and hold they will fly at you. I didn’t like him from the moment I saw him. I was shocked, I was not expecting to feel that way after all this was COB. I was kind of expecting to meet someone with bearing and perhaps some grace not a thug.
He took a friend for a star rated checkout and flunked him so loud and sudden, bellowing at the top of his lungs inches away from his face. “FLUNKKKKKKKKKKKKK” My friend was lead out shaking once DM had gone looking smug and his victim shocked and shaking with fright, disbelief and anger said that what he did was not necessary over and over. I thought he was a total asshole for doing that. I remember musing to myself at the time, I may have had just seen a rather abrupt example of an engram being created by COB himself!! Unbelievable, my friend was right it was not necessary I was pretty disillusioned from his behaviour. This all kind of got added to my look don’t listen findings that were steadily growing in the back of my mind.
So many examples! Lots of little things and a few really big ones too.
Wading my way through the Finance Series of HCOPLs I read policy that showed me I didn’t even qual for my post which I reported to my senior in CMO. My CMO handlers came up with an artful work around totally ignoring the policy instead of just changing my posting. LRH predicted disaster if finance policy was monkyed with and for good reason. This example showed me that the pressure from higher up in CMO was greater than their regard for policy. It became a matter of learning what policy was important and what policy wasn’t. LRH policy was used selectively because CMO was ruled by fear.
One evening me and the other FBO I/Ts and the LRH Comm I/Ts were taken into a small wood lined luxurious board room within the Manor, The CFD UK and LRH Comm UK brought us there for a special briefing. We were taught the Class V staff were the enemy as they were all Dirty F***ing squirrels. We were to use SRAs or Severe Reality Adjustments to coerce and overwhelm them into compliance. We practiced shouting F*** you into each others faces for a bit CMO style and them were ordered to go into our orgs and kick ass. This was our intro to the New Style of Management and we were full of sh*t. To my shame I obeyed it completely.
I was in and out of the CMO building all the time, they were crazy. This was a time when much was changing in the organisation of power in the SO. A new CO CLO UK on post. The finance office had been put within the CMO which allowed the FBOs to control the bank accounts of all the class five orgs and this gave a way for Int to bypass policy and just do what they liked. The building of the film rooms to show the Origination film on was done with total disregard for policy. I would be hearing stuff like “it’s command intention you out ethics f*** you are using policy to stop” etc etc. I spent better part of a year learning finance policy, was a total noob on post and was undermined by my org who rightly saw me as a hostile invader, which I was, and my uplines bosses who just wanted to bypass me and grab the loot. How dare I actually know policy!!!! I got into more trouble for that than anything else. Being busted down to Saint hill for full life O/W write ups to get me out of the way allowing a Gold mission to empty all the bank accounts for a projector. Putting the HAPI into an unauthorised overdraft which back on post I had to handle and carry the can for. When all this was queried the reply was. “It comes from COB it is COMMAND INTENTION.” When queried again more ethics. Months in AOSH Qual Library with sheets of paper, black pens and terrible endless headaches, feeling like a total scum bag writing up everything bad I had ever done. I spent more time in Ethics than I ever did on post.
Being on post at HAPI I had the realization that what was going on did not resemble anything I had learned policy wise and it was a total waste of time continuing. Months of sleepless nights, eating every other day, constant undermining from the ED No pay, and illegal orders from up lines which got more and more wild and off policy I knew I had nowhere else to go. I had to leave, it went beyond choice.
I would be turning my back on my comrades. I loved the people I was with, my fellow SO members I had no clue what they suffered, no one talked at all. NO CASE ON POST everyone shut up thinking that it was them and everyone else was doing ok. I have read some of the stories of people I knew personally and I felt shame at caring so much for them when I knew them but not knowing them enough to know a thing about their plight when I was there sharing it.
I was lucky in that I cottoned on quickly and was forced out. Saying in was never possible for me and I was terrified of being posted overseas, that would have had me stuck properly. I knew I could get home and get away I was never really trapped. I feel for those who are. My experience is only an appreciation for what they live with so courageously day in day out for so many years.
Now and then people would go missing and no one would mention it you knew they had blown or routed out but you didn’t understand why. Overts was the official line and a fearful contempt with betrayal was felt, like they were letting down the team. Again nothing was really said and they were soon forgotten until after a while too many had gone for it not to be thought about and looked into. Then one day it dawned on me. I had the simple cognition that it was time to go home.
I blew HAPI just after the GAT stat push event retuning home only to go to Saint hill a few days later to route out. Six weeks later my PC folder was finally found on the Continental Finance Directors desk and I got in session only to crash. I was a mess physically and mentally and totally unsessionable. In the end after weeks of sitting next to the lake or reading books at Walsh manor, totally forgotten. I decided to go. Looking back I remember the beautiful woodland and the peace of the place. Helping out Rennos build the stables alongside the RPF. Reading copies of Spike’s NME in the Rennos hut. It was late summer and despite everything that was going on life was perfect cause the weather was so fine. Nature helped me a lot then.
I hopped over the wall and started walking into town. A CMO member spotted me, returned with a security guard who intimidated me back to the castle. I finally escaped by employing devious means to get into town unseen by getting a lift from the bus driver who was heading back to Walsh Manor and then using the moment to get the train home. I brought my ticket and sunk down deep into my seat expecting security to be on the platform any second. In London I enjoyed a pint whilst awaiting my connection, eyes everywhere expecting to feel a hand on my shoulder at any moment. This was fun but scary fun.
The first hours back in my home city where no one knew my location was a unique and fantastic experience. What followed were months and months of partying as I decompressed from my 2 years in Scientology most of it at AOSH and some very dark months in HAPI. The highlight of this time was the phone calls at home which would end up as a kind of fun debate where we would pointlessly throw policy at each other until they left me alone; I seemed to have more policy to throw! Once I saw a person taking photos of me. I chased them down the street and never saw anything like that again.
After that I spent years depressed resenting my life feeling doomed until I started reading up on other therapies and methods which allowed me over time to realise that Scientology is pretty much the same as everything else out there and falling off the bridge was no bad thing. Life was to be lived and could be again.
I felt one of the nastiest thing that the Co$ has done is to inspire within a person the concept of the bridge and the need to get up it only to snatch it away forever when any non compliance to their intentions are shown. This is an act of violence in itself which blighted my life in a deeply subtle way for a very long time, adding a doom to my life. For a long time I rejected the tech totally but still that darkness was there. Later I would work though this and change it
From what I saw inside and what I lived outside I could not reconcile the need to give up all self determinism and literally grovel for freedom as a means of gaining the self determinism that LRH talked about. I was so frustrated that a lot of people could not see it. And it became a bit part of why I could not carry on.
Phew, Thanks for reading please ask any questions I will do my best to answer.
