Your Friends vs. The Truth

When I was a Scientologist, I believed I possessed a Permanent Truth that would inspire my whole life.

Then.

Truth changed.

I saw things about Scientology that I’d rather look away from, or I found out things about Scientology that had been withheld from me.

My Permanent Truth disappeared, right along with all my friends, my job, my business contacts and – almost – my whole family.

After the devastation of leaving Scientology, as an Ex-Scientologist, a new truth emerged for me. I was positive this truth was permanent. Because really, how many permanent truths can you go through in one lifetime?

Now, as an Anti-Scientologist I used the Internet to fight for this new Permanent Truth I’d found. I gained a whole new group of friends in Anti-Scientology after losing all my old ones in Scientology. My new friends and I all agreed on this new Permanent Truth. It remained stable for at least a few years.

Until it changed, too.

Decompression as an Ex-Scientologist

We recognize that an Ex will go through a “decompression period” after leaving Scientology. We’ve watched Scientologists turn into Ex-Scientologists and, one after another, change what they believed was true.

Once they learned about these hidden things, such as L Ron Hubbard’s true bio, the real results of the technology of Scientology, Exes have changed their “permanent truth”.

But just like most Scientologists find it very threatening to recognize that their truth will change the more they learn and experience, so do a lot of Exes. Why? Because they know that as the truth changes, your whole life, and all your friendships and even family relationships, will be threatened again.

As Exes, we explained away this phenomena of losing all your friends and family in the Church by saying something like “If they quit being your friend/family just because the truth changed, then were they really your friend/family to begin with?”

The ‘true’ answer, of course, was “NO!”

This is usually followed by a new sense of security and satisfaction that your new friends and family out here in Ex-Scientology land are your REAL friends/family who would never dump you, or ban you, or threaten to ban and fair game you, just because the truth changed.

For some reason, human beings derive a sense of stability and security from believing they possess the truth. But just a quick scan of the wikipedia article on “Truth” can call all that security and stability into question. A thorough study of that article, and all its related references, will completely destroy any sense of security you once had in knowing “the truth”.

So people develop social skills that they use to hold on to their friends and family as the truth changes. The truth becomes less important than their friends. They become not so vocal about things. When they see an Ex-Scientologist telling himself complete lies about his own personal experiences as a Scientologist, they shut up and just let him keep doing it. They let the person keep thinking whatever he wants, no matter how false, no matter how self-destructive, because they don’t want to harm their friendship with him.

David Miscavige does this, too. As L Ron Hubbard did before him, David Miscavige knows that his whole empire is built on Keeping Scientology True. And so he either looks away from, or lies about, all of his experience that tells him that is not the case. He expels and fair games anyone whose truth has changed if they refuse to shut up about it. David Miscavige knows that if he values the truth over his social position, then all his friends who support him now would jettison him out onto the street.

So as long as he keeps making Scientology true, he keeps his social position on top the Church of Scientology.

The current popular kids of Ex-Scientology on the Internet know this, as well. If they say something “controversial”, or make some public statement that the truth Exes all agree on might not be true, they will lose their position of social popularity which gets them likes, readers and video views. So these popular kids end up saying things that they don’t really believe any more, or they keep looking away from things that might make the truth change again. And they ban anyone who disagrees and won’t shut up. They do all this in order to hold on to their social popularity, their existing relationships, and to keep selling their books and t-shirts.

It’s much easier to acknowledge that social relationships are impermanent than it is to acknowledge that the truth is impermanent, too.

The impossible thing, for me, is to recognize that they are both just as impermanent, and that they depend on each other, and to be fine with that.

So, apparently, you can have friends, and you can have the truth, but you can’t have both.