You would never know it, but since getting out of Scientology 24 years ago, I’ve practiced Buddhist meditation.
I was just beginning to study it while I was in college and came across Scientology. They told me Scientology was American Buddhism, updated, with science and meters. Proving how little I knew about Buddhism at the time – and science – I fell for it.
My practice of Buddhism does not include any other human beings. I belong to no temple, sangha or school. I collect all the ancient and original texts I can, read them at night, and apply them in my practice in the morning. I’ve learned to hold my attention on a single point for hours, and I’ve learned to sit with all kinds of things – emotions, sensations, and other mental objects – and watch them change.
I’ve learned that life is suffering, and I’ve learned that the purpose of Buddhism is to reduce suffering.
I’ve learned that there are ways that one is to conduct one’s self as a Buddhist, and that is where I fail miserably.
I am a horrible Buddhist.
Something Happened to Me While I was Meditating
About ten years ago, every morning for about 3 weeks, my meditation turned to a spot in my solar plexus, a kind of encysted energy packet there. The more I sat and watched this packet, the more it exploded. It exploded with pictures and emotions and all kinds of fireworks. Every morning.
For 3 weeks.
Those meditation sessions all ended with me on the floor, tears and snot streaming down my face, crying and laughing at the same time. My body vibrated with the released energy from this ever-shrinking encysted energy packet in my solar plexus. And one phrase reverberated through my whole being after every one of those meditations:
At this time I had been an Anti-Scientologist for almost a decade and a half. I was angry, real angry. I was at war with Scientology.
When this happened, I discovered that I was also at war with myself for having been a Scientologist.
These three weeks changed my whole mind and life. It took me years to figure out what had happened to me, and even longer to be able to articulate it.
I saw how much my anger at Scientology had clouded my judgement. I was able to distinguish now between David Miscavige, Mike Rinder and Marty Rathbun vs every other Scientologist who never harmed anyone and never would. I was able to see how the anger of Exes and Anti’s was being used to manipulate them away from ever getting justice for the victims of Scientology.
I was able to accept myself for getting myself into, staying in, and getting myself out of Scientology.
So, in order to try to help other Ex-Scientologists who I thought were in the same boat as me, I began writing about all this.
I care very much about the people who have been affected by Scientology, and my way of manifesting that care is to write as Alanzo.
The Problem: In addition to being a horrible Buddhist, I am also a social retard.
The Dwindling Spiral of Alanzo
Every attempt I made to write about this further alienated me from every one in the Ex-Scientology community. Prior to this, I was fairly popular and influential in Ex and Anti-Scientology. But the more I tried to articulate this thing that happened to me, this thing that had completely healed me from the effects of Scientology & Anti-Scientology, the more everyone hated me.
Alanzo-bashing became the way to show your loyalty to the Cause as an Ex. People hacked my blog. They followed me every where I went on the Internet to doxx, harass and discredit me, to get me banned, to break up any friendships I had, and to ensure no one supported me.
Because I’m such a social retard, and such a horrible Buddhist, I quintupled down.
I sought out Exes I knew, and who everyone else knew, as examples of what NOT to do after getting out of a “cult”. I looked for scientific validation of the concept of “brainwashing”, and finding none, smeared that into everyone’s face.
I realized that the “trauma” that most Exes were trying to recover from did not – in the main – originate from being in Scientology, but from adopting the Anti-Scientology/AntiCult ideology, and, as a consequence, going to war with one’s self as a former Scientologist.
So, instead of being at war with Scientology, I was now at war with Anti-Scientology.
Buddhism teaches that there is nothing beneficial in anger. It teaches that anger blinds you. Anger disconnects you from what you need to be perceiving. It deludes you from the cause of suffering, and blocks any attempts to reduce it.
Enter Doug Kramer.
I tried to explain all this to Doug.
And he just got angrier and angrier with me.
End of Part 1