utah addiction recovery

Recovery: 2 Steps to Stop Thinking With Anti-Scientology

Do you remember when you finally awoke to find yourself thinking with the Scientology mindset?

You were horrified to wake up and realize that your thought patterns and emotional habits followed the Scientology ideology. And do you remember all the work you needed to do to un-condition yourself from that? And do you remember all the advice that anti-Scientologists, like me, gave you to stop thinking and feeling with Scientology?

Well this is a message to Ex-Scientologists who have awoken to find themselves thinking and feeling with the Anti-Scientology mindset. Here are 2 steps you can take to try to recover from that.

This your road to recovery from Anti-Scientology.

Today is the first day of the rest of your life.

Ex-Scientologists:

65 thoughts on “Recovery: 2 Steps to Stop Thinking With Anti-Scientology”

  1. I’m not sure if case is a scn specific term regarding mental procedures. At any rate it would be hard for me to remember what part of my case got gone from scn since it’s gone! I didn’t take notes or keep a diary. Generally speaking I think I got “case gain”. lol

    • Case gain might be something I learned about myself that I hadn’t realized before. See what you did Alanzo? You got me using scio-think again, (joke)

      Actually you make a good point above. There are very many terms and terminology in scn which are accurate descriptions of the human mind and human behavior. I believe if I were to study college psychology there would be many concepts with which I was already familiar.

      P.S. I timed it once and a normal speaking voice is 140 words per minute. So a 10 minute talk is 1,400 words, not a daunting task to write out.

      • You would be very familiar with basic and advanced psychology concepts, it would just be a matter of “relabeling.” I have long thought that many people who found benefit in the study of Scientology would have made great therapists. They have a great commitment to helping and changing.

          • Or anywhere else….

            But very true. The people at my first mission were really cool, positive, happy people that really wanted to do good and help. Well, maybe not the registrar, haha.

            Scientology seems to attract this personality type. Which is one of the things that kills me about it. To commandeer thousands of people’s good intentions and quest for spiritual growth and harness their energies for decades (in some cases) on some garbage you invented in a drug-addled fantasy is really…rude. Hip, hip, hooray.

            • Rude indeed. But Scientology, due to Hubbard, got stuck in time as the science of the mind continued to develop. So many advances and new understandings were never incorporated, for example the role of cortisol.

        • yes Eileen, Hubbard thought of Scientology Auditors as great people or therapists as you state and even people joining staff and the Sea Org.

          Through Hubbard’s rhetoric he accomplished two things. One was saying pysch’s or psychologists are evil people, and two, thru his rhetoric and sublime created people who thought they were masters of the mind applying scientology technology, and psych’s should be eliminated from society.

          Here is the reference of Hubbard’s “What Do I Think OF Auditors”:

          (this similar rhetoric and sublime statement by Hubbard is given to anybody to join staff or the Sea Org via Policy Letters or Lectures or speeches by Hubbard)

          http://internationalfreezone.net/lrh-auditors.shtml

          “WHAT DO I THINK OF AUDITORS?

          “Every now and again somebody tries to get me to say what I think of auditors. They want me to become hypercritical, I guess, so as to match the asker’s tone. Well, I better make a public utterance after all this time.

          “I think of auditors in a rather intense way. As I know more auditors than anybody else and have a better basis for judgment, on this subject I can be for once an authority.

          “My opinion of auditors in general is fairly well known to several people.

          “I think of an Auditor as a person with enough guts to DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. This quality is rare and this quality is courageous in the extreme.

          “It is my opinion and knowledge that auditors are amongst the upper tenth of the upper twentieth of intelligent human beings. Their will to do, their motives, their ability to grasp and to use are superior to that of any other profession. I think of an auditor as having INITIATIVE. He is able to grasp or make a mockup and put it into action.

          “Auditors survive better than other people.

          “If this world has any faintest chance of surviving it will be not because I write, but because auditors can and will think and do.

          “I think our auditors came from beings lately arrived on Earth who, seeing where it was going, decided to band together to send it elsewhere.”

          • When auditors leave Scientology do they tend to move toward the helping professions? I think LRH created a barrier.

            • Have to agree with that, for sure. I’d be interested to see if there any examples of folks that have transitioned from being a highly trained auditor to going into the psych field. The anti-psych dogma is intense in CoS. But even if they overcame that, if might just be a matter of how much of their time and resources have been used up already by the time they split. How many could spend a decade or two in Scientology, leave, then start studying to be a psychologist. Of course there’s counseling/social work and other less demanding options. Still have to have the qualifications to get licensed, though. Interesting.

            • don’t know. But I do know as well as others, one of the mostly highly trained auditors, and even trained by the authority hisself Hubbard, is Karen De, and she delivered the famous L’s rundowns which were supposed to produce “stably exterior with full perception” people, LOL

              She’s making a killing selling on Ebay and Amazon Art Prints. One would think if she could produce “stably exterior with full perception”, if she kept auditing after leaving scientology, why she’d make a killing doing that.

          • Good reference, Gib. I think every ex scn-ist needs to look attitudes of superiority carried forward from scn and get it in perspective. I certainly did.

            In the above reference Hubbard said “I think” and “my opinion” which doesn’t occur much in the tech. There are reasons for that, basically everyone doing their own thing and adding their own opinions would have allowed scn to become a willy-nilly organization and philosophy/psychology, hence refer to Source.

            Elron said group agreement was bank (reactive mind agreement) and that he alone had risen above it. It was an easy way to explain away human folly and I bought into it to some degree with a let’s see what happens attitude.

            These things have been said before on the blogs but maybe worth repeating. Regarding the rhetoric, everyone likes to get stroked and Hubbard was an expert at it! A list of negatives could follow but why bother?

            • yes Richard, I also had a lets see attitude, but I still spent too much time and effort, and still do since I’m posting here, laughing. But I enjoy it, nonetheless. As do you and Alanzo and others who post.

              I do have one up from you since I’m married to somebody who has done the entire bridge to OT8 and L’s. I have a different perspective than you or others. Correct me if wrong in my assumption.

              Hubbard created group agreement! How did he do this?

              He created a culture of a way to think, a cult in short.

              So here we are analyzing this?

              • “. . . I still spent too much time and effort . . . ” indicates regret. I’ve mentioned often that I received little to no damage from scn. No disconnection, bankruptcy and so on so it’s easier for me to just look at it as a life experience, unlike people who got creamed.

                • P.S. That was an evaluation so I apologize if I misread your comment. If nothing else, ex scn-ists are tiny percent of the human population so we’ll always have something to talk about. 🙂

                  (not to exclude “never-ins” who have plenty of input and enjoy joining the conversation)

              • Maybe this is too far off topic, but just for conversation,

                “Hubbard created group agreement! How did he do this?” I agree with your in depth investigations of how Elron created a cult using rhetoric and other methodologies. What must also be considered, imo, is his creation of an occult philosophy at OT3 and above. (which I didn’t do)

                George M. White has been doing an in depth investigation of this and, to me, presents convincing evidence that Elron drew from and copied things from Crowley, Blavatsky, Theosophy and other occult sources to come up with his own creation. He obviously believed in it to the extent that he audited BTs to the end of his days.

                • Richard, not only rhetoric but Le Bon’s books. Le Bon’s books were a written discovery by Le Bon viewing the the French Revolution how groups or crowds or cults were formed with ideology. His books tried to inform one how the leaders did it, but it is also a blueprint on how to form a cult, a crowd, a ideology. Hilter read Le Bon.

                  George’s research into Crowley and Blavatsky I have also done and agree with.

                  It’s too bad it can’t be explained that Hubbard fell for his own stick and died thinking the same. He admitted he failed and wasn’t coming back, I wish Sea Org members got this message that he told Sarge.

    • Richard: “Generally speaking I think I got ‘case gain’. lol”

      So did I – but I don’t add the “lol.” (lol 🙂 )

      Seriously, though, I was thinking recently about one of the biggest case gains I got from my auditing. It was the ability to look into my own thoughts and feelings and sort out whatever is there that’s bothering me. All you have to do is to do it, and to be honest with yourself.

      Just the other day, I decided to take a look at something that had been bothering me for quite a while, and I assumed that was just the way things were in that area of my life. But when I looked at all sides of it, I spotted that I had an intention and a counter-intention to that intention (i.e. its opposite) – as well as an emotion and its counter-emotion. I then realized that this is the anatomy of a problem! (You probably remember that principle, too.) When I saw that, the whole topic lightened up to the point where it’s no longer an issue that I fixate on.

      Incidentally, as you probably remember, that principle is the basis of Grade 1, which concerns the pc’s problems. The end result of the grade is “the ability to recognize the source of problems and make them vanish.” This is one of the things the anti-Scn rhetoric gets into mocking, something like this: “What BS that is – no one can make problems just vanish!” It’s a good example of their ignorance, in that they don’t even understand what they’re mocking – much less that a person actually can gain that ability.

      • Just the other day, I decided to take a look at something that had been bothering me for quite a while, and I assumed that was just the way things were in that area of my life. But when I looked at all sides of it, I spotted that I had an intention and a counter-intention to that intention (i.e. its opposite) – as well as an emotion and its counter-emotion. I then realized that this is the anatomy of a problem! (You probably remember that principle, too.) When I saw that, the whole topic lightened up to the point where it’s no longer an issue that I fixate on.

        One of the things that I’ve noticed about Hubbard is that when he defined this type of thing, he did it in an oversimplistic way. Most often, a person doesn’t just have one emotion on one side, and another emotion that is it’s “opposite”. In fact, I don’t think it’s possible to have “opposites” in emotions.

        What I’ve learned since Scientology is that the way to solve real life – multilayered, infinitely-varied real life – is to identify all the parts and step back and look at it, admiring it for all that it is. See the beauty in it. Then watch. Usually, something new will emerge that transforms all that infinite variety into a new infinite variety.

        Let that happen and capitalize on it when it does.

        Like a surfer, just watch for and catch the next wave when the causes and conditions are right. One will come along.

        And everything will change.

        And that, is the Way of The Beaver.

        • Reminds me of as-is. I used to *love as-is. Man, I thought that was a real thing, and it seemed so logical, instinctual and cool. I think it gets close to something that’s real, but on it’s own I think it is (to borrow from Alanzo) cartoonish. But I’ll be damned if I don’t find myself trying it out in the back of my mind sometimes, or looking for real world examples of it. That, to me, is the whole point of this post. There are concepts in this existence, there are useful ideas, they are out there, floating in ether, waiting to take shape and be used. Just because Ron got his grubby hands on some of them first doesn’t mean I can’t touch them now.

          I’m down with the Beaver, Alanzo. Is there a contract?

          • I run into this difficulty all the time when I study and practice Buddhism.

            Hubbard has this view of “exteriorization” that is a “thetan” stuck in a body and then “exeriorizing” from it like getting out of your car.

            In my practice of Buddhism, there is also a view of “exteriorization” but nothing like a “self”-like thetan getting out of the body. It’s more like getting out of the idea of a self and being able to tolerate existing as an infinite sea of consciousness that is entirely selfless. It’s an infinite now without an idea of a self. I realized that this is immortality, and this is how Buddhism both teaches that there are multiple lives AND an impermanent self.

            My study of Scientology fucks with me constantly when trying to grasp this view of the “reality” of my existence. And if this is not the reality of my existence, it’s what keeps popping up for me when I meditate. It might just be an illusion. But there is an explanation there that makes sense to me and gives meaning to my life (lives).

            I’ve looked around for something more workable, and after Scientology, I was so desperate I even became an atheist for a few years. I figured that all that science would be trustable and could be used in place of religion. But that collapsed on me, too, pretty quickly once I learned and experienced the limits of science.

            This is the one workable view of the “truth” of my existence that I have found. It works and makes sense for me. It explains all kinds of stuff to me. I just have to constantly learn to dump the simplistic kindergarten mimicry of this view that I got in Scientology, and remember to dump all teachings – even from Buddhism – and make my own.

            That’s the hardest thing after Scientology for most Exes, I think.

            Exes think that because Scientology was proven to be so wrong, that there is some kind of right view that the anti-cult movement has, or some “common sense” view from the wider culture. After Scientology, they just want the answer that is given to them to be right.

            But things don’t work that way. There are no answers that anyone else can give you.

            You have to create your own.

            Exes sometimes don’t want to do that hard, very uncomfortable work of creating their own answers. They were wrong before and they figure they will be wrong again if they do it on their own.

            • Right, because again: cartoonish, no?

              The whole exterior thing was the biggest hook for me. I had convinced myself as a teen that my nightly travels up and into the clouds and across the countryside were astral projections. It had been happening since I was a child. Then I got my hands on some books about it and that was it. I mean, if someone wrote it in a book, it must be true, right? So I spent alot of time trying to learn this ability, to do it at will. Night after night, before I would drift off to sleep. This wasn’t a bad thing, in the long run because I became really familiar with the hypnagogic state, which is a fun place to hang out in if you’re interested in your own inner workings. Anyway (I feel like I’m really dumping my soul out on here right now, hope y’all don’t mind) when I found out that Scientology processing included “be 3 ft in back of your head” and that the OT levels were supposed to produce stable exterior states, that was IT. I was toast, man. He had me. We all know how the story ends, though. I never met anyone who could look me in the eye and tell me they could be “exterior”. Cartoonish. I still believe there’s something to it, but we just don’t have a grasp on what’s really happening yet when people report the near death, floating above their body, or waking up gently bouncing against the ceiling. Non-local consciousness could very well be real, I’m not ruling it out, I just think it’s not so simple. Part of what we loved about Scientology was the whole simple aspect, right? The “blow through the stops, cut through all the bullshit, just confront the thing in it’s pure simple form without all the garbage.” This actually leads to some super-effective people, but it’s an over-simplification of reality, in my opinion.

              TL;DR-ness in full effect here. : P

            • This is some killer stuff, man. My experience was that when I left, I stopped looking for anything spiritual at all. Everything was suspect at that point. It was all bullshit to me. I just said “Wow, that was a fantasy. Guess I better just get busy being a meat body wog and get a job or something. I’m still sorting and untangling, obviously. But your post just hit me right between the eyes with it’s wisdom. Really good insights.

              It’s no wonder everybody hates you so much, Alanzo. You’re obviously a sneaky asshole, cult apologist, osa shill. I mean “you have to find your own answers?”
              UNBELIEVABLE.

        • Alanzo, where I said “opposite” I probably should have said “opposing,” which can simply mean “differing from.” Here’s a good description of counter-emotion:

          —————————————-
          “You have two goals with emotion. Thought, via emotion, seeks to stop action, self or exterior. Thought, via emotion, seeks to start action, self or exterior. Anger, for instance, seeks to stop exterior action. Fear seeks to start self-action to get away.

          “Now, emotion is emotion whether it is yours or another’s. Live around a person who is continually angry and you will begin to emotionally react toward that anger, for the anger seeks to stop you whatever you do. Live around a person who is afraid and you will pick up their fear and try to COUNTERACT [my caps] it with emotion of your own, usually seeking to stop their flight.” (Handbook for Preclears)
          ——————————

          In the last sentence, the word “counteract” to explain counter-emotion might make it more understandable than “oppose.” In addition, as in the example I gave, a person can also attempt to counteract their own emotion.

          Btw, speaking of cortisol and the fight-or-flight response, note that in the above quote Hubbard is addressing that very mechanism. 😉

      • Hi marildi – I added the lol so a never-in or anti scn-ist reading this blog wouldn’t think I had been brainwashed!

        Scn tenets work just as well for some people as any others. Alanzo goes into his own way of looking at things. Some people refer to the Bible for their answers. Boodhists* mystically refer to “the inner regions”.

        *That was just a joke about Buddhism. From my current viewpoint I think Zen Buddhism or Nondualism fits me. I enjoy Koans!

        • Hi, Richard.

          You wrote: “I added the lol so a never-in or anti scn-ist reading this blog wouldn’t think I had been brainwashed!”

          Now, that’s an lol! Especially in light of your comments over at Mike’s – where you give no apologies for the positive statements about your experience in Scientology. You are almost alone these days in so doing and a breath of fresh air over there.

          You enjoy Koans!? I’m impressed. Have you solved any?

          • marildi – There are stories in Zen Buddhist lore about acolytes asking a Master for help with their koan. Instead of getting an answer they received an unexpected good swift kick in the pants and achieved Instant Enlightenment. One such Buddhist told his fellow Buddhists that ever since receiving said kick he hadn’t been able to stop laughing.

            I’m still waiting for a teacher to come along and give me my perfect koan so I can skyrocket to Nirvana. (joke)

            Right or wrong and for your consideration here are two supposedly important koan type questions I’ve tossed out. “Who Am I” and “What is the true meaning of Life”. “Who” is an identity and “meaning” is a construct attempting to box things in.

            • “‘Who am I’ and ‘What is the true meaning of ‘Life’. ‘Who’ is an identity and ‘meaning’ is a construct attempting to box things in.”

              Well, my philosophyzing partner of old, once again I have an Adyashanti video for you. As synchronicity would have it, I just now came across it – and got the answer to your koan. 🙂

              I’m actually serious about that. The topic is what Adya calls “the soul’s discovery of meaning.” And at the end, he sums it up with what I would indeed call a kind of koan – and what he calls a “paradox.” The paradox is this: “unity and individuality lived out completely and fully.”

              It’s amazingly short too, only 9 minutes. The first video here: http://www.adyashanti.org/videomessage/study-course-intro/

              • Looking for the meaning of life is probably a starting point and probably I got started with scn. I still think looking for the “ultimate” meaning of life is a dead end. I might concede to looking for a “significance” here or there as Adya mentions – laughter

                I might change my mind. 🙂

  2. nice speech Alanzo,

    I have some comments, you are talking about policy letters and info given on lectures, not so called case gain. As well as the person who spoke in the recording that you posted. That’s my point about Hubbard’s use of rhetoric, his rhetoric was not in the auditing, but in the surrounding stuff, but also in the auditing. His rhetoric is the cheese thru out scientology, very hard to figure to out, but not really.

    You or others do not talk about so called “case gain” these days, aye? But you are talking about some concepts Hubbard stole from others and reworded, engineered, to persuade to join and get involved for all.

    Of course there are lots of things I have had wins in scientology, in realizing new things that I had never heard before. For instance Hubbard stole exchange in abundance from Napoleon Hill book, but now knowing the truth, I can live with exchange in abundance as a usefull concept to use in every day life on the job and elsewhere:

    http://www.bengtalvang.se/napoleonhill/law-of-success-napoleon-hill.pdf

    “Before you can secure co-operation from others;
    nay, before you have the right to ask for or expect
    co-operation from other people, you must first show
    a willingness to co-operate with them. For this
    reason the eighth lesson of this course, THE HABIT
    OF DOING MORE THAN PAID FOR, is one which
    should have your serious and thoughtful attention.”

    OMG, if one thinks about it, that concept used by Hubbard got people to join staff and the Sea Org, myself included, Hubbard just turned it up and created a crowd!

    • So, no wins for Scientology from you this evening, I see.

      Still too dangerous to give him just a little, eensy-teensy win?

      Remember your cortisol levels, Gib.

      That shit’ll fry your brain, dude.

    • Case gain. Sorry, but that’s not a win I can give. Never experienced it. Yeah, Ron may have stolen anything good from Napoleon Hill, or Dale Carnegie. Imo Ron was absolutely full of shit and the biggest conman this side of P.T. Barnum. This ain’t about him. This is about me, moving past him. Allowing something I may have learned in the process of being taken for a ride to not cause a fragmentation in my psyche any longer. The question of whether *being* a Scientologist was a good or bad thing is not up for debate as far as I’m concerned. It was bad. Now what? Do I let it tear my mind into pieces for the rest of my life? Not me. No thanks. I will continue to speak what I see as the truth in regard to the reasons nobody should step foot in an org and start the Communications Course, but I refuse to let my experience tear at me any longer. When Alanzo says “let Scientology have a win” to me he’s saying “Go ahead and let yourself, the part of yourself that learned a piece of tech that actually works, have a win, and stop condemning a chunk of your mind.” Just my opinion, of course, but I find this viewpoint to be remarkably freeing. And I’m into freeing right now. There are plenty of heinous things happening in the world already.

        • Thanks, Eileen : )
          fwiw, since I’m here now, and it wasn’t already obvious, the super secret audio comment Alanzo posted was mine as well, and thank you for your feedback on it. Your take on what I was stumbling trying to articulate was right on the money.

  3. Funny, just watched Chris Shelton’s latest video about positive changes being rolled out by the church. While he did not quite applaud these changes, he did acknowledge them. So, big step for Chris.

      • Indeed. My internal thought landscape regarding this subject is changing surprisingly drastically. I gotta admit, I never thought I’d find myself here.

        An ex-member’s experience is completely different from any never-in’s. I think for us particularly, it’s damaging to stay in the anti/hate/revenge state forever. There is such a dissonance happening internally. If being a Scientologist was as harmful and devoid of benefit as say, being a drug addict is, it would be a lot easier and probably wise to wall that version of yourself off, but that’s just not true for *most* of us.

        I really appreciate your pushing these ideas out there, Alanzo, in spite of it seeming like nobody wants to hear them.

  4. Good advice, Al.

    After years of purposefully NOT using Scn terminology, I’ve relaxed and simply pick the best word to describe what I want to communicate. For example, the other day I had an incident at work which I was explaining to my spouse, and the best way to describe my feeling was – “My TA was at 5, with a stuck needle”. Totally described the phenomena. In fact, NOT using a Scn term was MORE difficult.

    Another useful, uniquely Scientological term is Randomity. No real wog equivalent. Yet, it is a useful word, so why not use it?

    • This ex is also wrestling with taking the step to keeping what works, but I think he also speaks to how scary it can be to turn back to Scientology concepts. In the end he makes (I think) an important leap over to not needing to even call it a Scientology concept, but just something that works.

  6. At what cost? What a great question.
    I agree with you that the ability to use concepts that we like, and discard concepts that have become outdated is so important.

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