Message to Scotland's "Fearless Leader"

Brilliant!

Fan-frickin-tastic!

What can we say about these fliers and promo pieces that hasn't been said before? They are a true testament to the crazy that is the world of Scientology, that much is for sure. Poor Mike Spurgeon, the Commanding Officer of Canada. The last time I saw him some 18 years ago, he had a lot more hair. I think he's been pulling it out in frustration over all the ineptitude and lack of progress that is Scientology Canada. Interesting to see Jan Silbur continue to pound the pavement for those donations in Silicon Valley, just like she was doing ten years ago when i last saw her. It's sort of the same old, same old with these guys. One can only wonder why they choose to continue to live with the lies. Because make no mistake - Scientologists do make the choice to lie to themselves as well as the rest of the world.

On that note, I do have a new article on this which I posted today. With so much concentration on the negative aspects of Scientology and the abuses, I thought I'd take an opportunity to talk about all the positive things that have happened to me since I left Scientology behind. I think ex's will be able to relate and I hope everyone will find it of interest. Here's the link: http://mncriticalthinking.c...

I really get this Chris,..it takes many many years and I don't know if there is a "done" to this evolution. It's been over 20 years for me. It's part of your past. But learning to accept a mysterious world that will remain quite mysterious even to the most serious observer is something to accept. Learning to be an "earthbound misfit ", to quote Pink Floyd is something in itself and I don't know if you've noticed, the mysterious can be quite beautiful. Remember that girl back in junior high? Anyway things for me have cleared up gradually. Being married to a wonderful woman that was never a scientologist helped me helped hasten the process even though we rubbed off on each other.It;s all OK, I'm sure you are doing the right thing, and it's very courageous of you to speak out with your true identity. I'm sure you know the risks of that. Also you are reaching many more that you think. There are many I'm sure who read or see what you say in secret. Don't worry if it's not all perfect. There is truth where there is love. I stole that from The Moody Blues. As for me speaking through an alter ego is all I can handle right now, and probably ever, I wish no war with Scientology. I am older and don;t have the energy. I wish you all the best , health and happiness in your new expanded life. There are and have been so many brilliant people in this world I have been a frequenter of libraries looking for new ideas, new ways of perceiving our fantastic world in biographies, histories, classic literature etc. I have more curiosity than years and that makes me feel secure...Again thank you Chris for sharing your experiences.

I, for one, celebrate the lack of expansion in my "True North, Strong and Free" ... Free of Scientology ;)

Extraordinary article, Chris, especially the description of first recognizing, then shaking the constant anxiety, relearning communication, and your evolving timeline as to when you're really free of the last remnants of Scientology's effects. Thanks to your clarity, this never-in gets it.

Though it totally makes sense given working conditions, still blown away by Sea Orgs' constant state of high-level anxiety, which is yet another blow to their long term health. A bit of adrenalin is good under the right conditions. It's the body's "fight or flight" chemical that helps us react quickly in emergency situations...pull people out of burning cars, etc. But sustained high levels over the long term reek havoc on one's body, lowering immunity and opening the gateway for all kinds of diseases, including cancer, to gain a foothold.

Related question for ex-sea orgs: Did you find yourselves succumbing to colds, etc. a lot? Did you have to work through it at the same pace as if you were well? Could you see a physician or get necessary prescriptions? Are you afforded any downtime to recover?

Generally SO members who get sick are relegated to Isolation, a hell-hole like room (one for men, one for women) where maybe the food arrives on time and maybe it doesn't but you can always count on it to be cold and horrible. The Medical Liaison Officer checks in once or twice a day (maybe) and insists that everyone do Scientology Assists on each other to get better. Most people sleep a lot and read a lot because there's not much else to do. I saw a couple of folks bring laptops. Since you are sick and often have a temperature (the price of admission to Iso), you generally just want to drink a lot of water and sleep a lot anyway. We did have to keep track each day of how many assists we were giving and receiving and we were made wrong if we did not do a lot.

If it got really bad, someone could and would be taken to a doctor. It all depends on the circumstances and their own situation. The MLO truly did care about the staff, for the most part, but had to temper her caring against how much time she had available to deal with each individual since, generally speaking, she was responsible for a lot of people at a time. She had to deal not only with sick people but also the old, infirm/invalid and those who had real medical conditions that needed regular trips to the hospital (like heart conditions, cancer, etc). It's a job I wouldn't wish on anyone.

Wow...thanks for this insight.

I think you've done an amazing job in articulating your experience to us never-ins. And it's very apparent that you've taken time to think about how to help yourself get through this, and that you've gone about it in a correct way for you. Kudos to you for that. And good luck with your continued decompression. It sounds to me like you're further along the path to enlightenment than LRH ever was.

One thing you wrote jumped out at me:
"The whole nature of reality and how I viewed the world was skewed. My world revolved around pieces of information which I thought were universally true in the same way that 2 + 2 = 4. The facade started to crack when it became apparent over time that these “universal truths” weren’t actually so universal. The carefully crafted way I was convinced the world was supposed to work, didn’t really work that way."

I came to this realization just the other day while watching John Sweeney's BBC documentaries on CoS. I realized that productive debate or discussion between normal people and CoS parishioners is impossible because we can't understand each other. Sci's resent us standing in the way of clearing the planet; they can't fathom tolerance for multiple faiths because ron's way is the only way; freedom of speech is only for sci's because they truly believe they are the only ones who can fix the world. They literally can't grasp that most people believe there are many ways to improve and fix the world.

So realizing this, it seems to me that scientologists really have to free themselves. I just hope more of them are like you, intelligent and unwilling to live with the lies. Anyway, good luck to you. I hope your life continues to get even better.

For some idiot reason they are putting the disjointed word "DONE" in more and more of their fraudulent ads. That's something different.

It's a code word for progress inside the church.

It was one of Hubbard's admin tropes which has been instilled throughout the organization.

It is "OT" to make things happen and getting something DONE is evidence of how "OT" one is...as well as a "look at me" sort of thing.

Chris, excellent article. Very helpful to someone like me. And the "joy of being out" is hard to describe if you've never experienced it. You comments on decompression and how long it takes it honest and relatable to many of us ex-clams.

Great article Chris, even I "never was in" like me can relate to what you are saying.

Kind of like this....It's taking me years. Just relax you can't force it really.
https://www.youtube.com/wat...

http://cdn.meme.li/instance...

I saw that new posting and my first thought was that something flapped on this cont-wide and so the someone in CMO PAC probably did an invest and the handling involved making it a centralized function rather than leave it for the orgs. I am positive that the invest was prompted by RTC. The fact that they created this posting is very telling for a number of reasons:

(1) The outer-orgs (including all of the Ideal Orgs) are understaffed like crazy and don't have time for someone to sit around grading all their extension course lessons. It is an extremely time-consuming process - I know because I've done it. More on that below. It should be an org-level function and the orgs should be handling it because their public are the ones doing the extension courses.

(2) It's possible that with CLO WUS taking over the grading, they are also taking over the income generated by extension course signups. This is not a lot of money - I think each course is something like $30-$50, but accumulated across the whole cont, it could be significant income for the CLO. Since CLO WUS is effectively deliverying the service, they should be paid for it. But this may impact the BIS stat (#4 below) so I don't know if this is how it would be implemented.

(3) The backlog of unhandled lessons must have accumulated into the thousands or tens of thousands for it to have gotten to this point, with complaints racking up to the orgs and finding their way onto RTC's lines. It is only through RTC intervention that anyone would be forced to care enough about extension course lessons to actually post someone to grade them.

(4) Most public who are "on the Basics" are doing them on extension courses. It may well be that many of these public have been being counted as "Bodies in the Shop" even though they never set foot in an org. BIS is a very important stat for Scientology because they use to to create a false impression of how many people are actually on service in the orgs. Public, on the other hand, will readily agree to do the Basics by extension courses because it means they don't have to ever actually go into the org, get regged, be harassed to join staff, etc.

One of the biggest ironies of this is that CLO WUS's own staff course room had a consistent backlog of Basics grading on its own courses. The Supervisors couldn't keep up ever. How do I know? Because when I was leaving the Sea Org in 2012, one of the things I did while I was hanging around was catch up all the backlogged lessons! I did this routinely for a couple of months and it took that long to catch it all up and keep it caught up. I imagined that once I left, it was going to fall right back into a huge backlog and it probably has.

So this whole thing, Ruby, is likely a big "Danger condition" on the orgs and is probably being done to resolve public complaints which hit RTC's lines. Someone was very likely nailed for being 'Counter-Intention (CI) to GAT II" or "CI to the Basics" over this. That's my take on it.

The org form is broken, throughout global Scientology. It has become a total "Hey You" situation and just about anybody can be ordered to do just about anything.

They have nothing left but yelling and force. Scientology tech and policy are a complete, utter failures as evidenced by the flood of people...permanently exiting the organization.

Thanks to i-Betty for digging up all the dirt on this particular specimen of homo novis (refresh):

I was friends with David when we attended high school at Delphi Oregon in the 80s and early 90s. He was good-natured and very funny. I'm bummed that he's still drinking the Xenu-flavored kool-aid. His parents were hard-core Scilons, however, so that left him at a major disadvantage to ever be able to figure things out on his own. Heaven knows Delphi certainly did not give him any skills to do so.

He sounds like Laura Hodkin and Alessandro Calcioli (of stage-managed London Org wedding fame) and no doubt many hundreds of other pleasant, personable young people—with rather less pleasant but rich parents—almost completely clueless about life outside Shortarse's shrinking bubble. When it bursts, they're going to need help.

Yes, exactly--pleasant, personable, smart enough (but not *too* smart) and not at all inclined to question the beliefs of his elders. Imagine parents who raise their children to obey, conform and never question, and you're imagining Scientology parents.

It's fascinating to see that he always managed to evade the clutches of Sea Org recruiters. Delphi resolved a truce with the Sea Org that their recruiters could not roam the campus during the school year. Beyond that, all the Scilon students were fair game. I learned to fear going to the Portland org on the weekends where I knew they would be lurking like demons in the shadows to make me feel like shit for hours and hours while my non-Scilon school mates would be out shopping and going to the cinema. My parents were poor and on staff at the school whereas David's parents were wealthy. It was actually these brutal, never-ending recruiting sessions that began my initial dissatisfaction with Scientology.

David, however, just had to say, "I wanna be an actor!" and, backed up by his rich father, never had to endure what his less fortunate classmates went through. David was such a likeable guy that I find it impossible--pointless--to bear him any ill will. I'm glad he's found some measure of success in a very tough industry, even if assisted mightily by his well-connected parents. But, in retrospect, those days in the late 80s were clear signs of the coming stratification of Scientology so sickeningly prevalent today: the difference between those who had money and those who did not, the difference between gold meritorious patronage and Sea Org slavery.

Ugh, you had to go to the Org on weekends? That sucks. I had to go to course at my local mission on the weekends when I was a kid, and I fucking hated it. School all week, course all weekend. But I don't recall any of the kids at Delphi going to course when I was around the area. But that was late-70s to mid-80s.

When the Sheridan (formerly COSMOD) Mission finally closed in 1984, some Delphi staff members started making dutiful weekend treks to Portland for their services and training. I was ahead of graduation schedule and thought I could handle starting my Scilon training early, although -- you're right -- the stupid schedule of studying all week and the freakin' weekend soon proved to be more than I was willing to handle, especially with those dreadful Sea Org vampires lurking at Portland Foundation.

Gawd, studying in school is hard enough without having to dodge the fucking SO all weekend. BTW, I have no idea idea whether or not it's to Delphi's credit, but somebody sure taught you to write.

Anyway, I dodged the bullet once: A vulture started a recruit cycle on me at Flag. He asked how old I was. I answered (16) and he immediately broke it off. He said something like, "Ah, you're young! Go kick around for a while!" Poor fucker probably got sent to the decks.

Not too many years later, one of them conned me into his office at CCI. I very nearly put *that* fucker on the deck myself! They really go on and on about what a piece of shit you are. Luckily for all, though, I managed to get out of there without anybody getting hurt.

In a way, the Sea Org recruited us both right out of Scientology.

Interesting perspective.
And very nice post.
It is intriquing to hear about David from your perspective and juxtapostion it to your own experience.

Sad!

That's hilarious! Your small print never fails to elicit a guffaw.

I must reiterate that the hard work was all Don Carlo's (OCMB moderator), I just copied it. Okay if I post your shoop over there for him to see? :)

Thanks, Betty. Of course you can re-post it :)

Thanks love :)

http://ocmb.xenu.net/ocmb/v...

If he's a jaffa, then Hubbard was a goa'uld? Makes sense.

More like a satsuma, and Hubbard was one of those nasty centipede spine-parasite things from The Tingler.

Ohhhh, I saw that movie on TV when I was about 10 and it scared the crap out of me.

But he shore does got a purty mouf . . .

Nearly put "all-male adult videos", but decided I'd already impugned his reputation enough with the rest of it...

Really?* I'll have to investigate . . .

*Must be spoken in best Freddy Fillmore voice.

At least he could have made some money in the gay porn world. His,IMBD is not too impressive.

and Vulcan ears.
http://i.imgur.com/ULCd1Bv....

http://i968.photobucket.com...

Wonder who pitches and who catches? Or maybe it's one of those flip/flop things. Must be nice not to have use condoms since,"AIDS,is just a state of mind." Although ,dm looks like wasting syndrome is setting in. Must have got some bad nut..

Emphysema, chemotherapy, and speed will also give that look.

Yeah,he is man pretty.

My friend sent me these 2 photos from California yesterday. It's the strawberry talking to the banana on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. These fruity people are extras in some current (non-scilon) movie production.
Looks like it's the most exciting thing going on for $cientology and their sign there.
I thought it's apt to share this Sunday. ;)

Is that a CMO Messenger in hot pants standing immediately behind the strawberry and banana in the top picture? Heh.

Banana Inspector: Business as usual on Hollywood Blvd.

Ha! Great catch.

So, OSA has taken to setting out "Road Closed" and "Detour" signs in a last-ditch effort to get bodies into the shop...?

I dunno: Looks like another 'Fruit of the Loon(y)' production to me-- Definitely Scilon material.... or would they be using vegetables, like they do in day-to-day functioning?

Gotta run this morning. This is all I have to say...
(refresh)

Someone save that beautiful little girl :(

And her mum.