bts2free
Patron with Honors
Meshell, It's awesome that you guys all got out of the CoS, and are moving on with your lives. Some have said, and I agree with the analogy, that leaving Scientology is like the layers of an onion peeling away.
I too after blowing the Int Base and having been a Scientologist for over 20 years of my life, still believed in LRH and the Tech for a little bit after leaving. But I was too curious about how something that was supposed to be so good, could end up being so incredibly bad. And blaming it all on one little man just wasn't resolving it for me. Especially after having worked at the Int base and under that little man for a decade. Yeah, the dude's a major prick, but he wasn't the only douche bag at the top. Not only that, but I worked with Sea Org execs who had been in the SO from it's beginnings, and heard all kinds of stories from these people about LRH, past execs (Parkhouse, Gleeson, Franks, Aznaran) and other abuses that were happening back in the "good ol days" as well. "You think DM's being harsh? You should have seen what the Old Man would have done in that case..." etc...
You mentioned that the biggest reason you left was because of all the blatant tech and policy violations. I used to feel the same exact way, but later realized that there are so many things in Scientology that counter each other. i.e. you must follow policy to the letter, but never use policy to stop. The fact that disconnection was "canceled" but reinstated. The fact that sec checking was "canceled" but reinstated. You have "Command Intention." You also have your decisions based on The Greatest Good, for the Greatest Number of Dynamics. "Purpose" is SENIOR to "Policy," and whatnot. Yeah, some say it's all about learning how to "play the piano" in regards to all that, but that would mean a hell of a lot of individual pianos and Maestros.
The reason why the Int base is a madhouse, and the orgs are either empty or struggling is not because of the evil DM, but because of all the dichotomies, confusions and holes that Hubbard left in the mix in both tech and policy. It was all about making money, and getting others to produce so as to make more and more money from the very beginning. That's also covered in policy.
What made me really wake up was Hubbard's true history as opposed to the PR version that the CoS pushes out about him in their Ron mags and other publications.
As well, his admiration for Aleister Crowley, his relationship with Jack Parsons and his role and participation in the Babylon Working and Black Magick rituals, made me realize that the man didn't represent the kind of "theta" he'd made himself out to be.
A must read is Hubbard's Affirmations. If you haven't read those yet, I recommend you do when you have some time. The above is really only the tip of the iceberg though.
These are the things that really woke me up, and fast. I'm so glad I didn't spend another 10 or 20 years wondering if I'd lost all possibility to my own spiritual freedom and wind up in that dark, black nothing that Hubbard describes will happen to all of us if Scientology doesn't make it.
Good luck Meshell! Welcome to ESMB! It's quite a journey.
John
There are plenty of them, but, in the 15 years or so of the internet and 50 years of (inadequate) reporting on Scientology, the amount of data that's accumulated buggars comprehension. And, yes, some is pretty iffy, but almost everything can be documented, false reports tend to get debunked pretty quickly and, waiting for 'courtoom ready' information would mean *not* listening to some of the most compelling first hand accounts by credible witnesses.
