Dweeb's Story

[Dweeb]

so... I went and let myself get distracted again sorry lol I spent 20 years or so of being completely "out" and not really giving a damn about what had been going on in and around scn and suddenly I find myself reading through it all - weird but cathartic.

I've been trying to get my head around timelines of everything - not really important I know, but it kinda bugs me that I cant get all the timings straight in my head. I know the first time around on staff started first school holidays of my first year in high school so that puts us about may/june 1983, I was still there for the whole portland fuss which If i recall correctly was the same year I left school so thats 85'ish and I was still on first time around when LRH died (early 86?) - so if Dad had got his way and I had signed a 2 1/2 year contract I would actually have made it to the end. In some ways that would have been good - the big button that got me back in twice more was that I felt I had made commitments I hadn't honoured and that I had let people down that mattered to me, that wouldn't have been an issue to me then. The downside though would have been that I would probably still be there now if my contract had finished at that point. I was still winning despite frustrations on post, staff were still getting auditing at that point and all the "little" outpoints I could see seemed fixable still. Had my contract ended then I have no doubt I would either have resigned, or signed an SO contract which I was kind of keen on at the time or saved my money and started on my bridge.

Seems weird to say "start my bridge" after being around for a few years. I had done a comm course and basic study course when I first came into contact with scn that Dad and Pat had paid for, but everything else had been admin training, I got good things from that and still use some of it but I didnt really have much personal experience with studying the "tech" I was trying to convince everyone was the big way forward. Auditing wise I'd had some book 1 at the start then everything else was kinda of mix and match depending on what students needed in the way of a pc. Started out normal enough while Dick and Amy Povall were still on staff there was regular staff auditing and I got thru grade 0 & 1 in a "normal " kind of sequence but after they left and the only auditing was as a PC for students that it got a little weird. One week a little grade 4, then maybe some grade 2, back for more grade 0 (even though it had been previously attested to) then maybe some more 4...etc it was just all over the place. I didn't mind I figured any auditing was better than no auditing and I felt I was getting something out of it. At some point that first time round I had *that* cog or a close enough variation at the examiner after a session and was told to start saving my pennies for DCSI (this was shortly before it became CCRD so 85ish?) and thats where my book commissions started going towards for the next little while, it wasn't a service you could get for free as staff in a class iv org but, as Marion had enthusiastically pointed out, I could get a 50% staff discount on the intensives. Even at half price there was no way I was going to be able to make it happen while I was still at school and I put such a "must have" on it I decided I was just going to have to leave school and get a job. Its still the stupidest decision I ever made, and the thing that makes it even more stupid was I never finished paying off the intensive before I blew so the thing I threw my education away for never ended up happening

 

[Enthetan]

Talking some more we came up with the idea that I would start reporting my actual out the door stats( which is what would count for things like the birthday game, and the Staff Normal and Above stats) and what I'd managed to get written that hadn't made it out the door for financial reasons (which my weekly conditions would be based on), the theory being that I would at least be applying the right conditions based on what I was getting done so on the weeks the financials worked out I'd have a product to send. It worked really well, I wasn't getting stuck on my conditions anymore because they were more real to me and I was bouncing around the place all gung ho again - until someone on the day org wrote it up and I had to go back to doing conditions based on my no money found stats after first working my way up from my assigned liability condition for out-admin. Included in that KR (knowledge report) was my "unusual solution" for not being able to afford letterhead and I was made to put a stop to that too. So now I needed the org to have an exceptional GI week for me to "produce" anything at all. It felt like a kick in the teeth and my motivation went out the window. I started having days where I really just couldn't bother going in since I couldn't get anything done anyway, and I just kept digging myself a deeper and deeper hole with ethics.

I knew another guy in another org in the same situation. When they finally comm-ev'd him, and he brought up that there were no funds for doing anything, the one of comm-ev committee people told him "Well, you should have paid for it out of your own pocket, if that's what it took to make it go right!"

 

[Dweeb]

I knew another guy in another org in the same situation. When they finally comm-ev'd him, and he brought up that there were no funds for doing anything, the one of comm-ev committee people told him "Well, you should have paid for it out of your own pocket, if that's what it took to make it go right!"

The comm ev comes later lol though my findings suggested I should try and reg ppl rather than relying on others. To reinforce the idea they made me dissem sec so I would be reg held from above funnily enough that wasnt ling before the first time I blew.

will continue when I get home cant type on phone to save myself

 

[Enthetan]

The comm ev comes later lol though my findings suggested I should try and reg ppl rather than relying on others. To reinforce the idea they made me dissem sec so I would be reg held from above funnily enough that wasnt ling before the first time I blew.

will continue when I get home cant type on phone to save myself

In retrospect, the only way to finance an org, given that the bulk of the money gets grabbed and sent uplines, would have been for affluent public to adopt the org, and pay for supplies instead of contributing to IAS.

But that would have put LRH and DM into psychotic episodes.

 

[Dweeb]

In retrospect, the only way to finance an org, given that the bulk of the money gets grabbed and sent uplines, would have been for affluent public to adopt the org, and pay for supplies instead of contributing to IAS.

But that would have put LRH and DM into psychotic episodes.

There were public who would chip in for things like the way to happiness campaigns and books in to libraries etc but I dont think anyone would ever have actually had the cheek to say Hey throw us some money for stamps, or basic supplies etc, it would be like an admission that we weren't the successful group that scn was trying to portray ourselves as. We were fortunate enough that we even had a couple of successful businessman who were willing to help out on big reg cycles even though they weren't willing to be on staff.

In our case in Auckland, I don't think it would have mattered if none of the money went uplines. At that time we had a whole floor of a building on Queen Street - the main street in the biggest city in the country. At that time Queen Street rents were the most expensive commercial property in New Zealand. Even though the old building we were in would have been at the cheaper end of the scale for the area it was still a real stretch with both org's (Day and Foundation) income to make rent, let alone pay utilities etc.

Also at that time Auckland was a little different - the inner city wasn't 24/7 like it is now, it was very much just a commercial area. Everything in NZ at that time was pretty much closed by 6pm and shops closed for the weekend at lunchtime on a saturday, so there was never really the foot traffic to generate new "customers" right off the street during foundation hours and a lot of the people that were starting courses were people who knew people who were already in. Most of the foot traffic in the evenings was either headed to or from the Fort Street Red Light District around the corner from the org lol which probably wasnt our "ideal" public

 

[Dweeb]

The thing I loved the most about living in a house full of scientologists was sitting around the dining room table drinking coffee late at night after post, conversations that would sometimes go late late into the night. Sometimes it was about tech and how it could be used to fix situations or just general philosophical debate - basically it was open forum on any topic that was deeper than a puddle. The people would change depending on who was staying in the house at the time but the ritual didnt. I still miss that whole feeling that went with it, this group of people with a common purpose and certainty that they had the tools to make a real real difference. Looking back now it seems kind of silly and naive but the best way I can describe it was that it felt like hope.

Many of those late night coffee debates helped form a lot of the viewpoints I have of the world - both then and now.

When I think back now for when my viewpoint on scn started to change, I cant pinpoint the exact moment - I think it went on subconsciously for sometime before I was really aware of it but when I became aware that my opinion was changing I could remember the late night discussion years before that had established my own personal measuring stick for whether or not scn was right for me.

I cant remember who was round the table that night - which is a little daft since in some ways its the basic basic of me getting out and actually staying out much later. The conversation started out simply enough about why didnt we just give away auditing etc, and we could get people free so much faster and the example quoted was the Gideon bibles that you picked up free in a lot of places - anyone could have their "tech" there was nothing in the way of them just getting their bible reading it and applying it, no financial stops etc. We'll call this person A just to try and keep the conversation a little less confusing lol

Person B : and you of course read that free bible you got right?

A: err no, I'll get round to it one day though, when I have the time

B: you had time to read that new book you bought the other day though....

A: well yeah...of course I wouldnt spend ten bucks on a book I wasnt gonna read

B: and was the stuff in your new sci fi book more important, or world changing than that bible you got for free?

A: no but I've been waiting for this guys new book for ages, I just like his books I'm not silly enough to think they are going to change the world

B: but your new book is more valuable than that bible right?

A: dont be silly people have lived their lives based on that bible for a thousands of years

B: but you didnt read it.....

A: (pregnant pause - you know the cog is coming ....)

B: you worked hard to buy that book last week you spent $10 you dont really have then you used the little amount of free time you have to read it - that book was more valuable to you than the bible you got for free - it might not be more important to the great big world but to you right here right now that book is more important. The book shop told you it has a value of $10 and you agreed it did so you made it go right to get it and you made sure you read it straight away because it was valuable to you. That bible you found lying around the place didnt cost you anything you didnt have to earn it and they just told you it has no value - its free costs nothing - and thats how you treated it

So, A has his cog and the conversation carries on about exchange and how if its important to you you find a way to make it happen etc etc etc but I'd had my own cognition in the middle of that lot - dosen't matter what you are selling - cars, stereos, dreams, ideas, freedom - if its not valuable to the person you are selling you are wasting your time. Sure there's all sorts of sales tech that can help you bully someone into paying for something but you haven't "sold" it to them - they bought it to get away from you, thats fine if you are in the business of getting stats up or not worried about repeat business, but when you're in the business of clearing the planet you want that guy that left with DMSMH to read it, you want him to apply it and you want him to tell people and thats not going to happen if he doesn't see a value in it. Call it reality, agreement, value, perceived importance - whatever, all of a sudden it explained a lot of things in the world for me, both good and bad. The way I applied - for lack of a better word - this thought would end up creating a lot of my doubts and contribute to a lot of the time I spent in ethics.

Most of the people on this forum have either seen a scn reg cycle in action or been on one side or the other of it. The reg pushes away at your "ruin" until fixing it has value for you. Some of those cycles can get a little hardcore but I always justified it to myself that when the person being sold got onto course or in session and their awareness of how much this was helping them kicked in later they'd thank you for it, it makes me squeamish as I type this to remember that some did thank you for it but more often than not they just didnt come back. With my all new viewpoint I started looking at the whole Reg thing differently - I didn't really have an issue with the hard sell because we cared enough to be helping them right? but I started to notice WHAT was being sold and things started looking screwy to me. What was being sold wasn't necessarily what the person needed (I mean from the viewpoint of what we offered as a solution to a specific problem - Im not gonna start the whole is any of it worth it debate lol), what we were selling was what we were being pushed from uplines to get sold, for example the push this week is to sell the book on red dogs. Joe Blow is having issues with blue dogs - so we sell him the book about red dogs and tell him it will fix his blue dog issue. If we were lucky Joe Blow would tell us this wasnt fixing his issue and we could now sell him the blue dogs book, but more often than not Joe Blow decided he got a lemon and we didnt hear from him again. Instead of trying to fix people we started trying to make quotas.

So out would come the debugs and the why always came down to delivery - either the auditors or the academy which was bs we had two really good auditors in Dick and Amy Povall (both Saint Hill trained from memory - I had more in session wins with those two than I ever had with anyone else), and we had a truly amazing course sup in Phil Evans. The why was never that didnt care about the people who wanted our help anymore.

We had all signed up because we cared, in fact we cared so much we were there trying to get people to a better place no matter what the world wanted to throw at us for trying. Somewhere along the line though this had changed from caring about people to caring about stats. I started having doubts because I could see this in people then I started to spin because I could see it in me - I'd gone from being fired up about my letters not going out because we weren't communicating with our public, we weren't letting them know we were still here and that we cared about how things were going for them - now I was fired up because I wanted my letters to go out so people would stop bitching at me about my stats and ethics would leave me alone.

The value in scn to me had been helping people become the people they could be - but we didnt care anymore - well we cared about the stats but not the people. I dont know how it happened - I dont even know how it happened to me let alone try to explain it for others, but somewhere along the line what we cared about changed and most couldnt even see it. I started getting into trouble - taking days off answering back and was spending a lot of time in ethics, but at this point I couldnt even see the value in ethics anymore I just assumed I was a stat to be handled and it wasn't about fixing me.