Helpful talking points for a Scientologist in doubt...

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astra

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Post Wed Jun 09, 2010 7:16 pm

Helpful talking points for a Scientologist in doubt...

Someone forwarded me this letter they wrote to a friend. I think it is very insightful and could be helpful for anyone with a friend or family member still in Scientology who is questioning their beliefs.. Here it is:

Dear xxxxx,

Since our conversation the other day, I feel I owe you some further communication. I’ve thought about it a lot.

I don’t want to be in the position of being seen as trying to talk you out of
continuing with Scientology. I have my own perspectives and I’ll share them if asked or incited, but I don’t have a must-have on what you do.

You said you have doubts, not about Scientology but about the church as it currently is, I think. I’m not sure of how you see the distinction, but I’m not going to make a distinction for now, because I’m not sure that someone can look at one or the other without looking at both. You’d pretty much have to say that they are both Hubbard’s creation, either directly or by proxy.

I don’t mean to play down to you, or act as if you don’t already understand the things I’m about to say. These are just things that I looked at and realized, which may be useful for you to consider. I’m sure that you’ll take them only for what they might be worth to you.

Using the tools of Scientology to critically examine Scientology is a bit like
trying to examine your own eyeballs using your eyeballs. Not that it can’t be done, sort of. A mirror at least gives an external perspective. But you’re still inside looking in, if you get the picture. It’s hard to even get a mirror-equivalent perspective regarding Scn because, per Scn, the mere idea of perhaps finding something wrong with it infers an overt or misunderstood or other failing on your part. If you’re holding firm to that perspective, nothing can happen.

Therefore, something to consider is whether using the tools of Scn somehow biases the result, and if so, what to do about it. In my case, I had very little in the way of other tools to use when I found it necessary to really start digging in on this. I couldn’t really even start looking outside Scn for such tools because I was pretty firmly holding on to the idea that no really reliable tools existed outside of Scn. So I was kind of stuck for quite a while. For me, using any aspect of Scn to examine
Scn only became truly possible after firmly adopting LRH's essay "Personal
Integrity" as the senior tech/policy point for me regarding Scn, because it was the most fundamental thing that I could agree with completely, regardless of what it might turn up regarding LRH or Scientology. I didn’t adopt it because LRH wrote it. I adopted it because it is a truth which I could see exists independently of LRH and Scientology, even while being “part” of Scn.

I highly recommend it as a touchstone against which everything else is compared.

I had a dreadful sense that if I really found that there was something wrong with Scn, or that it was a false path, or something I had to disassociate myself from, that it would mean giving up or invalidating the wins and gains I had made using it. I also had a sense that the tools I’d acquired from Scn might have to be dropped, because they belonged to Scn and were mine only as long as I agreed with the whole
package. It was kind of like feeling I’d have to abandon part of myself. Weird feeling. Finally, a wise friend pointed out that any gains I had and any tools I found useful came from universal truths, regardless of whether or not they were also included in Scn. Regardless of whether Scn exists anywhere else in the universe, the mechanisms by which is gets whatever results it gets are resident in the world, not Scn. That gave me a little more courage to look.

Ah, “courage to look”. That’s a clincher. It took me a really long time, even after I decided to truly question Scn, to actually decide to take the blinders off. They were blinders that I held in place myself, out of fear. Fear based upon having been told that it was dangerous to look. Fear based upon the idea that I might not be able to recognize truth myself. Fear that I might find I’d wasted the bulk of my adult life with nothing to show for it. Well, my personal experience has been that those fears were unfounded, even the one about wasting my life. (I won’t try to
explain this last at the moment, but it really is true. We may have a context to discuss it in the near future.)

I think most people who get into Scn follow a pattern similar to the one I see that I followed: I approached Scn cautiously, but after reading a fair number of Scn books and getting very hopeful that a truly logical, scientific approach to the spirit had been developed that answered everything, I took the comm course. I had some really good wins. That’s the point at which I decided that everything was true and that Hubbard was what he basically said he was: a completely reliable source of
true and useful information about life and the spirit, and that he had done
something that no one else had ever done. At that moment I lost, almost completely, my ability to discriminate regarding LRH and Scn. Whether or not he actually is a completely reliable source of true and useful info is completely irrelevant. I’d enslaved MYSELF. (Whether or not I was exploited into that position on purpose is not necessarily relevant at this point in the analysis. The point is I gave up, willingly, the lion’s share of my own discernment. The environment did, however, tend to encourage and confirm that state of mind.)

You have to be willing to find what you find. Scientology may be a perfectly great tool, but if you’re going to examine it, you also have to be willing to find differently. Otherwise, why even look?

Okay, so am I really willing for you to find whatever you find and decide whatever you decide? Really? Yeah. I think you know me well enough to know that’s true. I may or may not agree with your conclusions. But if you really look, if you really do a for-real doubt formula (or however you approach looking), I’ll be happy as your friend and fellow traveler. If you decide that staying with Scn means that you can’t associate with me anymore, I’d be saddened but I’d understand. As long as you’re
true to yourself.

I’m available most anytime, if you’d like a terminal. Quite aside from the question of Scientology, I’ve got a lot of things I’d like to talk about which I think you’ll find interesting.

Later, xxxxxxxx
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Recovering Scientologist

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Post Thu Jun 10, 2010 3:52 am

Nice letter. Well written and caring.
For someone who was raised in Scn, like myself, things can be a bit more complicated. Because I was raised in it, sometimes it is hard to distinguish between what was my parents influence vs actual Scn teachings.

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