The London event was cool, though maybe it had a little less energy than last month. The old guard where there again, seemingly a few more than last time, and it was good to speak with them and share thoughts and experiences with drinks afterwards. Starting to make some interesting new friends.
Most memorable moment would have had to been, one lady who had dressed up as a catholic nun, ran and leapt across to the other side of the street, and performed an impromptu hug raid, including to the Scientologists handing out leaflets.
Even met one old acquaintance, with whom I had done baby-watch with. He gave me an interesting perspective to some of the details surrounding the events and the people and issues involved, that I had not been made aware of at the time. As I was never "officially" part of the baby-watch, but rather informally helped out, and the church was worried that it could potentially go seriously wrong (in the end it didn't), and thus quite a few things where kept quiet and on a need-to-know basis. Even to the point that when he asked my father who I was (as I kept helping out informally), my father dismissed the question and didn't mention that I was his son.
I had previous gotten a copy of Gene Zimmer's Report on the Altered Definition of the Second Dynamic, and had 6 copies professionally printed and bound at Kinko's, its 115 pages of double sided A4 -
http://www.truthaboutscientology.com/al ... ltered.pdf
As for my own activism on the day, I first arrived at the London Blackfriars org, but only after the whole protest there had gone. I said I had a knowledge report for the ED of London Day, and handed one copy of this report to the receptionist (he should have gotten it today).
At Tottenham Court Road, I managed to read out parts of my speech, but got shouted down by Anonymous for TL;DR (Too Long Didn't Read). But managed to read out about half out if, in two separate attempts. I then crossed the road, handed out two copies of the Gene Zimmer Report, along with two copies of my full speech to my new Sea Org friend (though I have forgotten her name, anyone know?).
Well here is my speech in full, as revised, and re-revised over a few days (its quite different to the draft versions I sent out to a few specific people). The theme of the speech is really about thinking for yourself, and being more open minded, its quite philosophical and intellectual - you could call it my PTS type H success story (on being open minded).
Hello, my name is James McGuigan, I was born and grew up in Church of
Scientology to parents who had reached the highest OT levels. A few
years ago I was forced to leave Scientology when the Church declared my
mother a suppressive person and excommunicated her.
Today I would like to share with you some of the observations I have had
since leaving the Church, in the hopes that you might better understand
what is happening all around you.
When you are presented with a new piece of information, generally you
will look it over, to see how it fits in with your previous beliefs and
past assumptions. It could be right or wrong either way, but when it
matches what you already believe, you tend to accept it quickly and
without question or scrutiny. When it conflicts with what you believe,
you tend to question it more thoroughly or simply ignore it. In the
outside world, this is known as confirmation bias. Sometimes we are
emotionally attached to being correct, and dislike having to admit to
ourselves that we where mistaken about things and being forced to change
our stable datums.
At the extreme level, confirmation bias becomes fundamentalism. When we
have the truth, and this truth becomes absolute, the idea that we could
be wrong becomes unthinkable, and thus anybody else with a different
viewpoint is always wrong. Then when somebody says something that
conflicts with our own beliefs, we no longer look at it as an
opportunity to learn something new, but simply as an attack on what we
believe. Our minds then find reasons as to why they would want to attack
us, they must be a criminal, a pervert or part of some global conspiracy
to destroy humanity. When we start to think like this, we no longer have
to listen to what they say, but the truth is that they are just like
use, human and basically good. To forget this is the stuff of holy wars.
They are wrong because we are right.
It can be a scary thing to confront the possibility that our beliefs may
be wrong. But true wisdom comes not just from knowing what we do know,
but also from knowing what we don’t know.
An engram is a painful experience that still holds some emotional charge
that the individual is not able to fully confront, but they may not be
fully aware of. Because you cannot confront the pain, the mind will seek
to avoid it, and the things associated with it, at all costs.
Generalizations and A=A=A are just symptom of the minds inability or
laziness to fully confront and analyse everything it sees.
However groups can also suffer from engram like behaviour. In the wake
of a painful experience, a group will often create policy to avoid a
re-occurrence of similar events. Over time the original event and
reasons for the policy are forgotten but the policy continues to be
applied or mis-applied on a robotic and unthinking basis and reinforced
through peer pressure, but divorced from its original purpose.
There is a story about five monkeys in a cage. There is a set of steps
and a banana hanging from the top. One of the monkeys runs up the stairs
and grabs the banana. A huge bucket of cold water is then thrown over
all the monkeys. Another monkey tries to do the same and again another
bucket of cold water is thrown. The monkeys have now learnt not to reach
for the banana.
One of the monkeys is then removed from the cage and replaced with a new
monkey. This new monkey sees the banana and starts to climb the stairs.
The other monkeys look on horror and then jump on him before he reaches
the banana, and they all stay dry. Another monkey is replaced, and when
he climbs the stairs, again all the other monkeys jump on him. But the
first new monkey knows nothing about the bucket of cold water, and just
sees all the other monkeys attacking the new one and decides its good
fun to join in. One by one all the monkeys are replaced, to the point
that none of the original monkeys are in the cage. None of them have
ever been splashed with water, but it has now become the policy of the
monkeys in the cage to always attack the new monkey when he is placed in
the cage. This is the application of policy without understanding.
Thinking for your-self is hard work. When somebody else makes a
decision, it is often easier to simply accept it without having to go to
all the trouble of fully re-evaluating it for yourself. Chances are you
will come to a similar decision, but this is why it is hard work,
because if you don’t truly think for yourself, all the time, then you
will get lazy and simply accept the wrong decisions along with the right
ones. In many cases, we don’t even realise there is a choice to be made,
because nobody tells us that we have a choice, and thus we accept the
default option that is presented to us and just go with the flow. We
have now let somebody else make our decisions for us. As I said, being
fully self-determined is not a lazy man’s game.
It’s not my job to tell you what you should think, nor should it be. All
I can do is to speak my own truth, openly and honestly. I hope that in
doing so I will help you to find your own truth for yourself.
Bearing in mind what I have just said, I ask you to take a moment,
become aware of your own thought patterns, your emotional charge and any
pre-judgements you have might have made on what I am about to say.
Gene Zimmer was a long time scientologist, OT3 and has been in the Sea
Org since 1976. In 2001 he noticed a technical alteration in one of the
newly published books. To be specific, the alteration was in the
definition of the second dynamic.
Quoting LRH from the book: The Fundamentals of Thought:
"THE SECOND DYNAMIC – is the urge toward existence as a sexual or
bisexual activity. This dynamic actually has two divisions. Second
Dynamic (a) is the sexual act itself and the Second Dynamic (b) is the
family unit, including the rearing of children. This can be called the
SEX DYNAMIC."
But in the 1998 edition of the Introduction to Scientology Ethics Book,
and the Life Orientation Course Book, it is defined as, and I quote:
"The SECOND DYNAMIC is CREATIVITY. Creativity is making things for the
future and the second dynamic includes any creativity. The second
dynamic contains the family unit and the rearing of children as well as
anything that can be categorized as a family unit. It also incidentally
includes sex as a mechanism to compel future survival."
This is not just a rewording of the same concept, but has a completely
different semantic meaning. Sex and family is not the same thing as
creativity. Sex and family IS the second dynamic, not just an incidental
part of it.
This is point one of Keeping Scientology Working that we are talking
about here. So Gene Zimmer wanted to make sure it wasn’t just his own
misunderstanding or based on a reference he was not familiar with. So he
systematically looked up, every published LRH reference on the second
dynamic, and compared each one to the definitions I have just read out.
In each and every case, LRH consistently refers to the second dynamic in
terms of sex and family, and never referrers to it AS creativity.
Gene Zimmer wrote up his research, listing all the LRH references he had
found. His report runs to 230 pages of A4 text. I have even gone to the
trouble of printing out a few copies of this report, so that you may
read it for yourself. You have all the LRH books to hand, so if you
don’t believe me, you can manually verify his research for yourself.
Look at the truth in front of your eyes, and think for yourself, is that
too much to ask?
Gene Zimmer sent copies of his report to all the major church terminals
at RTC, at International Management, at the Flag Land Base and at his
local Tampa org. He even sent a copy to David Miscavige himself. He
thought somebody, would be able to give him an answer on this and
correct this most major and obvious of outpoints. Nobody responded to
the specifics of his report. Nobody replied pointing out the LRH
reference he had managed to miss. Instead he was put on trial, sent
before a Committee of Evidence, and his report used as evidence to
declare him a suppressive person.
Gene Zimmer’s report is far from the only case where LRH tech has been
altered by official sources. RTC’s new explanation for all these
changes, is that they are only now correcting the mistakes of the
transcriptionist when reading LRH’s handwriting. If you believe this,
then I suggest you to dig up a copy of the old cassette tape version of
the Philadelphia Doctorate Tape lectures, and compare them to the new CD
version. At the end of tape 20, there is a rather interesting quote from
LRH, that has been removed from the CD version, and I quote LRH:
“Did you ever read poor old George Orwell's 1984? Yes, yes, that's
wonderful. That would be--- could be the palest imagined shadow of what
a world would be like under the rule of the secret use of Scientology
with no remedy in existence.”
Now the question I ask myself, is why was this quote in particular
removed? If it is true, then who would be afraid of it? For me this LRH
quote sums up perfectly the very essence of what Anonymous are
protesting against.
I am not an enemy of Scientology, but I do want to see it reformed. The
church needs to be change, because if it does not change then it will
not survive for much longer in its present form. It has been suggested
by some, that I should not speak out publicly, that I should simply try
to handle the Church from the inside. If I honestly thought that
approach would work, then I would not be standing here. Am I guilty of
trying to save Scientology from itself? Yes I am. But is it wrong for me
to try and do so? That question will have to be left to the history
books, but I am happy with my choice.
Communication is the universal solvent. The end product of grade 0 is
the ability to communicate freely with anybody on any subject. So why is
it that in a Church full of Scientologists, nobody has the courage to
openly and honestly talk about the subject of Scientology with the
members of Anonymous. There is a lot of noise here, but there is very
little communication.
Who told you that there has to be a huge taboo on the subject of talking
about Scientology? Who told you that it is wrong to question the
outpoints you see within the Church? Did you think for yourself, and
make your own decisions on these questions? Or did you simply accept the
decision made for you by the ethics officer? Did you make a compromise
because it was the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics at
the time, but what happens when those compromises all add up? Is it
still the greatest good, or have we just started marching ahead in the
wrong direction?
To be honest, when I first started questioning these issues, it took me
long time to come to terms with it all. But then confronting any engram
or taboo is never easy. I had to take a good, deep, long, hard look at
myself and ask myself some basic questions. What where principals? What
where my stable datums? Should I think for myself or do what I am told?
Who's moral code am I going to follow?
In the end I simply looked at the end product of grade 0, the ability to
freely communicate with anybody on any subject, and took that as my
stable datum, the one above all else, regardless of the cost or the
risks involved. Today I am still very happy with that choice.
Freedom is a choice. Choose to be yourself, choose to speak your truth
and do so with compassion. And above all else, choose to be not afraid.
If I can't dance, it’s not my revolution.
Peace, Love and Light to you all.
Freedom is a choice. Choose to be yourself, choose to speak your truth and do so with compassion. And above all else, choose to be not afraid. If I can't dance, its not my revolution.
Sun May 11, 2008 4:02 am 
