Category Archives: Integral Theory

What We Do, Part One

Posted on July 28, 2013 by | 133 comments

For some orientation to what I would like to over in this essay I begin with a passage from Chapter 25 Epilogue from Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior (Amazon Books, 2013):

     As has been ably reported by Janet Reitman in her book Inside Scientology (Houghton Mifflin, 2011) and by Lawrence Wright in his book Going Clear (Alfred A. Knopf, 2013), L. Ron Hubbard was a very capable marketing man. What they did not acknowledge as much, but did not totally discount, was Ron’s ability to solve problems – including those of the mind and spirit. Ron had a knack for finding out what was bothering people, putting together methods to address those things, and then selling those methods as services – the end-all that people just had to get their hands on.

     The Reitman and Wright books detailed how Ron was continually creating new rundowns, new levels and new packaging to keep the Scientology public enthused over the latest in the mind and spirit.  It was the formula that created continuing expansion of the Scientology empire during L. Ron Hubbard’s life.  A strong customer base was established and continually kept interested and buying as new, essential route-to-total-freedom items were rolled out.

     Because Ron so unequivocally mandated that only Ron could discover, create and memorialize mental and spiritual technology (the only stock-in-trade of the church of Scientology) upon Ron’s death the church’s expansion pattern also died.

     Consequently, David Miscavige took on an unenviable task when he was handed the reins of Scientology Inc.  And those reins were handed to him, whether begrudgingly or not, by Annie Tidman Broeker (Loyal Officer 2) when she sided with Miscavige against her then-husband (Loyal Officer 1) Pat Broeker. Miscavige had no choice but to radically change Scientology’s forty-year expansion pattern.

     The movement had been built and held together primarily through the promise and continual roll-out of new technology. Now Miscavige had to keep that movement going, but with no possibility of introducing new technology. For a while he seemed to have somewhat of a grasp of marketing, but all the marketing in the world could not keep an organization thriving when it had nothing new to sell. At least not an organization whose viability depended on continual emanation of new technology to sell. And by firm religious belief and church doctrine, he was powerless to create any new technology.

These facts – recognized by credible, outside observers and by insiders like myself – are at the heart of why Scientology (the whole package) is as dead as a door nail.  The promises are infinite while the delivery of them is impossible.

The first thing that probably distinguishes us from all others we are aware of who utilize some of the discoveries of Ron Hubbard is that we do not play – in any way, shape, fashion, or form – the baiting evaluation game that comes part and parcel with Scientology.  That is the incessant, overt and covert, game of continuous evaluations along the line of ‘the next roll out will really get you there’, ‘the next level will handle your problem’, ‘you need to act in this fashion so that you see the wisdom of taking your next step’, ‘you’ll understand that when you get to ______’, or any other of the pitches that were memorialized in unalterable, firm Scientology policy and mental technology throughout the years.

That most decidedly includes the insidious safety valve, bait-and-switch line ‘the reason it didn’t work for you was that it was corrupted by someone else, and now we’re going to give you the real thing’ as is so regularly chanted by the church and the shadow it casts, Scientology practitioners outside of the church.  The real thing is precisely what is described in the book passage above: the never-ending promises to the stairway to Heaven that demonstrably does not lead to Heaven.  It more often leads instead to the perfect cognitive storm: holding these two conflicting ideas counterpoised,  a) I have done everything Ron prescribed, so I know everything there is to know, and can never improve because I am already perfect – b) all the while colliding with the deep-down, suppressed self-recognition that the individual has become intolerant, arrogant, callous and miserable.

This find-the-ruin, bait-and-switch mentality is woven into the woof and warp of Scientology.  It gets played from initial marketing to the highest reaches of the bridge. It has always been, both inside the church and without, that those who play it best are sainted with being the most ‘On Source’ (with L. Ron Hubbard) Scientologists.

It also happens to be Ron’s first,  greatest  – and ultimately most fatal – departure from the technology he primarily borrowed from in creating Dianetics and Scientology: Rogerian client-centered psychotherapy.  The second the client is played – in any way, shape, fashion or form – by definition the process is no longer client centered.  Instead, it by definition becomes practitioner – or organization – centered. The road to restoration of self-determinism becomes paved with enforcement of obedient following.

Do I mean to say that Ron was a con?   Do I mean to say that everything he discovered or purported to discover was fraudulent?   No; as you shall see in further installments.  But, I am defining what it is we do and the first thing we do is stay true to the client-centered philosophy that is at the heart of – in fact, is the sine qua non of – all that is workable in Scientology.

133 Comments

Posted in acknowledgments, Casablanca, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Lawrence Wright, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, Orgs, philosophy, regging, Scientology, tech, the future

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Ishmael

Posted on July 26, 2013 by | 117 comments

 

Some folks have found my repeated reference to the Tao Te Ching to be puzzling.  Some Scientologists have simply used it to write me off as being lost. The Tao is such a radical departure from the ‘philosophy’ Scientologists learn and abide by – even while denying to themselves such adherence exists – that some dismiss it as philosophical gobbledygook.  I have commented on the polar nature of those philosophies (Scientology and the Tao) and noted it as an important reason to become acquainted with the Tao, e.g. The Tao of Scientology.

The fact of the matter is that a consistent construct in Scientology requires the adherent to mock up and act out the identity of conquerer.  For example, a Scientologist is taught to view the universe as an epic struggle of the spirit’s sole mission as the conquest of the physical universe.  Such a view can and often does, if not mitigated by deeper understandings, result in destruction of that which one programs oneself to conquest; not to mention the weakening or destruction of the ‘conquerer’ himself.

Many have recognized this on some level and have departed the church because of the dangerous environment such a philosophy ultimately creates.  Many of them spend years then applying an harmonic of this same warlike philosophy toward the church, ‘it is the church or current management that needs to be conquered.’  Others facilely write off the ‘conquest’ attitude as an attribute of church management and go off to apply what they call ‘real Scientology’ independently.   Inevitably, to the degree they avow to remain loyal to Scientology ‘philosophy’, those independents wind up playing the conquest game against one another.  It happened with the first independent movement in the eighties and the second one more recently.

To the extent one recognizes this mentality in himself he objectivizes it and can thus let it go.  An increase in equanimity and personal peace can ensue.  That which was useful and survival for someone in his or her Scientology experience can more easily and naturally be recognized and reinforced.  That which was of negative worth and non-survival can be recognized and let go of.

The continuing recommendation of the Tao as integral reading and understanding was meant to set this salutary evolution in progress.

But, I understand how ‘left field’ this recommendation can seem to those living the Scientology construct of ‘conquest of matter, energy, space and time’, ‘conquering the reactive mind’, ‘putting ethics in on the planet’, ‘gaining territory for Scientology’, etc.

I just read a book that may help to bridge the gap between the necessity-of-conquest think and learning to let go or living and letting live.  It communicates the essence of the Tao (without ever making any reference to it) in more modern terms.  It does so in an entertaining and currently-relevant fashion.   That book is Ishmael: An Adventure of the Mind and Spirit by Daniel Quinn.  It is a novel that tells a story in a creative, unique and interesting setting  – a story that is captivating in and of itself.  It explores some scientific, philosophic and religious constructs that Scientologists are taught early-on to discard in their entirety – the Bible and Evolution of Species.  In that regard, those who have bought into and scrupulously adhered to Hubbard’s wholesale rejection of such fields will learn a little something about perhaps the two most common poles of thought on this planet.  You don’t have to buy into either of those poles, but I bet you will never look at them (or those who believe in them) the same way.  You might recognize the parallels of both with Scientology philosophy and thus be more able to put Scientology and your experience with it in a sane and nurturing context. Maybe more importantly, you might begin to take a more realistic, informed view of the planet, humanity, and civilization and your participation in it.

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Posted in acknowledgments, Casablanca, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, propaganda, Scientology, Tao Te Ching, the future, the Reformation, the world

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My Practice

Posted on July 23, 2013 by | 121 comments

My practice is grounded in client-centered education techniques.  That is not because I sought to duplicate them.  Instead, I recently came to learn that the way I coach and counsel toward recovery and graduation from Scientology was discovered and written about long before I was born.  Reading of it helped me to improve what I was already doing.  Carl Rogers covered this approach in his book, On Becoming a Person, explaining how educational techniques logically evolve out of client-centered therapy.

That I gravitated in this direction during my own recovery and graduation should be no surprise, given the authoritarian, religious discipline all Scientologists studied under for so many years.  The client-centered approach is tailored to consulting the understanding of the client or student.  In that regard, it radically differs from Hubbard’s training approach that was memorialized as follows:

If you can’t graduate them with their good sense appealed to and their wisdom shining, graduate them in such a state of shock they’ll have nightmares if they contemplate squirreling (defined as departing one iota from the letter of what is taught).  – L. Ron Hubbard, Keeping Scientology Working

That learning philosophy was explained further in Hubbard’s highest level instructions (Class VIII course) wherein he told the most advanced Scientologists that humanity was incapable of being appealed to through understanding; and so, instead, it was their duty to command people and make them ‘obey.’   (See Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, Amazon Books 2012)

Irrespective of the fact that much of the technology such methods sought to impart was geared towards bringing a person to self-determined understandings, that system of indoctrination ultimately implants fixed, subjective ideas about living, God and ultimate spiritual concerns.  At the end of the day, the methods place a glass ceiling on growth (in fact create regression) by means of enforced belief that curiosity and thirst for continuing education inherently stem from aberration.

It may well be that I was also influenced in the client-centered approach through my own earlier education, some of which was influenced by, or was even attempting to experiment in, Roger’s educational recommendations.  The middle school I attended was a fail-pass (no grade), choice of curriculum, self-scheduling format with emphasis on consulting students’ interests.  I also attended a semester of similar organization at University of California Santa Cruz.  I never knew until I read Rogers where these ideas came from.  Perhaps my Scientology study contributed to this leaning too, since I have noted in the post On Becoming A Person, Scientology’s central practice (auditing) is a modified, structuralized form of Rogerian client-centered therapy.  No matter what led to which along this road, it is interesting to note how what gets around comes around.

Having studied all of Scientology and a great deal on the subjects that led to its development (including their continued evolution while Scientology has remained static), a simple, workable rule of thumb has materialized for me.  That is, the degree to which Scientology departs from its client-centered philosophical and technical roots is proportional to the degree it harms rather than helps.  This in large part has become evident to me in helping people who were disappointed with their Scientology experience over the past five years.  Almost to a one, somewhere along the line each individual’s intent and purpose for engaging in Scientology in the first place were tampered with, rejected and replaced entirely by imposed intents and purposes.

Somewhere along the line in the Scientology experience the magic of the technology – each of its efficacious results marked by its adherence to its client-centered philosophic roots – is replaced by inculcation of the client rather than consultation and service of his or her needs, wants, aspirations and purposes.  Those goals do, and ought to if a positive evolution of awareness and ability is being achieved, change along the road.   But evolution in Scientology is geared solely toward achievement of goals that do not involve the client’s participation in establishing, except to the extent means are employed to obtain the client’s agreement to pursue them.  The attainment of those implanted goals turns out to be purely subjective – no matter how clothed in science its claims and promises are presented.   An objective examination of the result of those who pursue the implanted goals to their ends – no matter how convincing its achievers may be in professing their alleged subjective feelings of happiness, power, ability and bliss of self-actualization – proves their actions often betray their vigorous assertions of equanimity.  For the most part they have turned their own self-determinism (the restoration of which is promised) over lock, stock and barrel to their teacher (See What Is Wrong With Scientology, Amazon Books 2012).  They will lie, steal, and cheat for their religion without a twinge of conscience – all while attempting to exude a vibrant, open, extroverted appearance. Thus, they cannot be trusted by ordinary mortals, not even by their mothers, fathers or even their children. In any values computation, their religion trumps conscience.  And thus the price of the ultimate ring in Scientology is the forfeiture of one’s conscience.

That result is patently evident from counseling a number of people who have completed much of, or all of, the Scientology route both inside and outside of Scientology.  To a one, of those who graduated and moved on, their departures from Scientology were occasioned by their consciences failing to succumb to Scientology demands that they be forfeited.  To a one, of the dozens I have counseled.  The top Scientology achievers who remain, who forfeit their consciences to achieve (or at least assert) the ultimate super human powers Scientology promises, are in the somewhat schizophrenic condition of apparently being as happy as hell but in fact having nowhere to go. The result is continued, slavish adherence to the goals and programs of an organization that – by the time it has ceased delivering client-centered techniques – offers no purpose beyond self-perpetuation and world dominance.  The resultant super-amped adherent’s course is described well by Abraham Maslow, as apparently a common result of many paths that lose sight of client-centered principles:

The better we know which ends we want, the easier it is for us to create truly efficient means to those ends.  If we are not clear about those ends, or deny there are any, then we are doomed to confusion of instruments.  We can’t speak about efficiency unless we know efficiency for what.  (I want to quote again the veritable symbol of our times, the test pilot who radioed back, ‘I’m lost, but I’m making record time.’)

Client-centered education begins with finding out where the interests and purposes of the student (client) lie.  One encourages open communication in that discovery process.  Viktor Frankl’s work Man’s Search For Meaning is helpful in that regard.  Knowing the individual before you proceed is essential in working to recover and strengthen that person’s determinism.  Omitting this step tends to usurp determinism.  One doesn’t rehabilitate and enhance the faculty of determinism by indoctrination that conflicts with the client’s interests and purposes.  For example, one does not force a student who is inspired by, inclined toward – and thus usually gifted in some way – the arts to become an arms manufacturing specialist.  Similarly, one would not attempt to enforce upon a person seeking spiritual awakening the behavior and habits of a para-military religious zealot.

A client-centered educator does not preach and teach as much as find out and only then guide. He puts more emphasis on assisting an individual in finding and following his own purposes and interests.  He then does what he can to help the person move along that chosen path with the best possible chances for success. He acts more as a facilitator than an instructor.  He operates more of a resources center than a rigid curriculum school.

I have been asked, and challenged, to publish the specific route I recommend several times.  I have tried to do that.  But, each time in the process I find myself thinking of particular individual whom I have assisted in the past and recognize that a given reference for that person would not be of interest or applicable to another individual I had worked with.  No two paths are exactly the same.   I have learned through life that to the extent one tries to convince you otherwise that person is trying to lead you to where he wants you to go – irrespective of how eloquently he might convincingly represent otherwise. To the extent one attempts to enforce one way for all, one deviates from the client-centered approach – and some other interest or evaluation is entered into the equation for someone to whom it may not apply or serve any salutary purpose.

There are a number of recommendations I have made in the recommended reading section of the blog that I find myself recommending over and over again to people.   For the most part those are applicable to the Scientology decompression and contextualization process, and lead toward freeing one from Scientology’s injunctions against exercise of conscience and awareness.  Most of them were chosen because of their effectiveness in expanding people’s intellectual and spiritual horizons after years or decades of having those horizons treated as forbidden terrain.

I am working on a book that will make many more recommendations for those seeking to move up the Scientology Bridge in an integral fashion (non-cult, integrated approach), and another for those seeking to move up from and beyond the Scientology Bridge.  In the meantime, I strongly recommend that those embarking on the Scientology path – whether in the church or out – read  What Is Wrong With Scientology?, before doing so.  It will help you avoid the pitfalls inherent in the system.

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Posted in black dianetics, Casablanca, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, philosophy, policy, Scientology, squirreling, tech, the world, training, Viktor Frankl, What Is Wrong With Scientology?

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1. Body, Mind and Soul

Posted on July 18, 2013 by | 181 comments

Spirit is the invisible-to-the-eye animating agent that brings vitality to otherwise lifeless matter.

A soul is an individual unit of sentient life.  It is the spiritual being.

Souls, so far as we can tell, are of the same quality as spirit. Souls seem to be distinguishable from spirit by carrying the notion of individuality or demonstrating it through operation of, and identifying with, an organism and exercising some measure of sentience.

Thoughts are those considerations, ideas, intentions, and similar units of mental creation of other descriptions that are produced by souls.

Mind is the combination of, or repository of, thoughts generated by souls, including mental mechanisms and systems devised by individual souls to satisfy interest, curiosity, and convenience.

Physical matter reality consists of the observable, measurable components and combinations of energy and matter in space and time.

The body is the physical human organism that is distinguishable from soul or spirit, but which is animated and operated by spirit or soul.  When imbued with soul or spirit the body is alive.

Spirit, soul and thought can only be measured indirectly.  That is because they do not apparently consist of energy and matter located in space and time.  However, they can be observed to create effects in physical matter reality. They can only be objectively evaluated against those effects that they create in the physical matter reality universe.  Because soul and spirit cannot be observed directly through the five senses nor measured by physical matter reality instruments, they have largely been ignored or denied by many sciences.  That ignorance is more recently being challenged by modern thinkers conversant in both advances in science and traditions of spirit.

Whether souls are actually separate units or individual manifestations of a greater, all-encompassing body of spirit is a philosophical question that has been argued through the ages.  Since neither can be measured and directly scientifically evaluated nor described precisely by words, ultimately that question is answered by each individual in accordance with his or her own perceptions, awareness, experiences, knowledge, beliefs, and conscience.

This work is designed to assist an individual become more acquainted with soul and spirit.  It is based upon the idea that increasing such familiarity can lead to more spiritually fulfilling states of awareness or consciousness and more meaningful lives.

A soul is capable of the creation of effects on other souls and physical matter reality.  It does so through animation, the as yet scientifically inexplicable process of bestowing life.  It also apparently does so through thought.  A being’s considerations are so effective that they seem to dictate how others and the world itself appear and how they affect the individual.  Wayne Dyer has said, ‘when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.’   That would serve as a fine exercise to test for yourself to determine whether the ideas conveyed here have any validity or appeal for you.   Before you continue reading try it for yourself.   Alter your own viewpoint in any fashion you choose, then go out and take a walk or a ride or a drive and see how the world appears from that new viewpoint.   If you are undecided on how to change your viewpoint, try to assume a more optimistic, positive outlook; then take your walk or your ride with that attitude.  From this new point of view talk to people you have talked to before from an earlier viewpoint or outlook.  See whether your change of viewpoint and outlook creates an effect upon others and whether it changes the way things look to you; even if only ever so slightly.

If and when you see that your considerations can change the world and even the people in it, you may wish to continue reading.

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Posted in healing, independents, Integral Theory, philosophy, the future, the world, Uncategorized

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When The Shoe Fits

Posted on July 16, 2013 by | 107 comments

From The Way of Chuang Tzu by Thomas Merton:

 

Ch’ui the draftsman

Could draw more perfect circles freehand

Than with a compass.

 

His fingers brought forth

Spontaneous forms from nowhere. His mind

Was meanwhile free and without concern

With what he was doing

 

No application was needed

His mind was perfectly simple

And knew no obstacle.

 

So, when the shoe fits

The foot is forgotten,

When the belt fits

The belly is forgotten,

When the heart is right

“For” and “against” are forgotten.

 

No drives, no compulsions,

No needs, no attractions:

Then your affairs

Are under control.

You are a free man.

 

Easy is right.  Begin right

And you are easy.

Continue easy and you are right.

The right way to go easy

Is to forget the right way

And forget that the going is easy.

107 Comments

Posted in healing, Integral Theory, philosophy, quotations, Tao Te Ching, the future

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Time and Space

Posted on July 13, 2013 by | 99 comments

Time_and_space_Wallpaper__yvt2[1]

Studies in science and consciousness (e.g. Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra, Biocentrism by Robert Lanza, The Field by Lynne McTaggart, My Big T.O.E by Thomas Campbell, etc.) have demonstrated through a variety of means that time and space are constructs of  human and animal minds.  They have no independent, observed or tangible reality in and of themselves.  We create them in order to establish dimensions within which to survive amongst and with other organisms and to play games.

Transcendent experiences, such as enlightenments, peak-experiences, even Scientology releases, are instances where the automaticity of creating time/space constructs are ceased – even if for the briefest of spans.  At those moments we experience more of the true nature of the universe and its interconnectedness. Here is the realm where psi (psychic phenomena – or theta perceptics – such as clairvoyance, precognition, psychokinesis, and telepathy) activities are observed and exercised. That reality only appears perceivable and achievable outside of our mental time and space constructs, which by their very purpose and definitions create the apparency of separateness.  Those transcendent experiences are often far and few between for folks because they have so permanently implanted upon themselves – and begun to mistake for ultimate reality – the reality of the time and space constructs they create. But, the more frequent a practice makes their experience possible, the more chance we have of, as Ken Wilber put it, converting temporary states more toward more permanent traits.

L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and Scientology processes are exercises in restoring the ability to cease the automaticity of creation of time and space.  Understood in this context, it is very easy to run processes, to run groups of them (grades/levels), or even the complete program (or Bridge), to their fullest potential gain.  Not a lot of duress and dogma designed to instill unswerving devotion and surrender is required to bring about ability when that simple, if all-encompassing, framework is kept in mind. When viewed against this scientific/consciousness field of evolving, tested context Hubbard processes can become as natural and simple to deliver as driving an automobile.

I think the more a practitioner appreciates these facts, and our increasing objective (scientific) understandings and how they relate to consciousness, the more proficient, effective, and empowering his or her practice becomes.

This ability can become unachievable in Scientology; much in the way it has in many other practices.  There are a number of reasons for this.  However, all of those factors can be recognized and understood to one degree or another as invitations or commands to build further time/space constructs, and to believe so implicitly in them that one – once again – puts the process on automatic.  Whatever titillating or inviting backdrops against, or foundations upon, which one presents such enticements to build new mental constructs, they still have the same regressive effect ultimately.  They send one back down the rabbit hole of time/space construction, which after enough practice ultimately to one degree or another goes back onto automatic.

Consequently, a simple axiom evolved for me that I have found useful in studying and applying any work in the fields of spirit, philosophy and psychotherapy.  To those cemented into the permanent constructs some paths tends to embed one in, this will sound like the most rank heresy.  To those not so embedded, it might help keep you from falling into the wet concrete looming along certain paths.  It is simply this, to the degree data assists with relieving additives to the mind that enforce automatic time/space construction it is valuable; conversely, to the degree data invites introduction of additives that further automatic time/space construction it is destructive of higher awareness and states of consciousness.

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Posted in healing, Integral Theory, Ken Wilber, l. ron hubbard, philosophy, Scientology, the world, Uncategorized

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The Future

Posted on July 7, 2013 by | 192 comments

I am in the process of writing two books related to Scientology.  It seems to me at this juncture of that process that they will probably be the last I write about Scientology.  In keeping with the philosophy I follow in helping people on a one-to-one basis, I am writing with the purpose of assisting people in a fashion that does me out of a job.  I think that modus operandi evolved out of recognition that somewhere along the road Scientology sowed its own seeds of destruction by inculcating a sort of unhealthy dependency.  I consider what I do to be of the nature of outfitting and guiding folk to begin charting their own paths.  Hopefully the books will relate all that I know to be workable in assisting people to move on up a little higher.  The first book is about moving up from the ultimate trap that is Scientology for those stuck in it to one degree or another. The second book is about applying Hubbard’s workable discoveries in an integrated fashion that proofs one up against getting entrapped in the first place while seeking higher levels of awareness and consciousness.

The former is a recommended guide for moving on up beyond what Scientology has to offer. The latter is a recommended guide for integrating safe and sane application of that in Scientology that can be effective for those who wish to apply it.   That is, an integral practice which by my own estimation is the only fashion by which Hubbard’s workable ideas will survive or serve salutary purposes for future generations.

All of my books to date, including the first future one introduced here, are directed at a very limited audience: Scientologists and potential users of Hubbard methods.  As much as Scientologists and even former Scientologists would like to convince themselves otherwise, I know this to be a tiny minority in today’s society.  The audience is so limited that writing books on the subject is not a means to make a living; in fact it is an impediment to doing so.  The books are written out of a sense of obligation for imparting what I have learned through my own experiences of moving into, through, and beyond Scientology.  It is my hope that somewhere down the line that the audience for the second book, the integral guide, might gain a wider audience;  or, at least, serve to get some of Hubbard’s ideas into the conversation and mix in future integral mental and spiritual practices.

By necessity, the books are second in priority at the moment to making a living.  When they might be completed will be determined by the time I can find for completing them.  Notions of integrating, evolving and transcending are apparently not the most popular among former members; and most certainly, thinkers and researchers in integral practice don’t want to even hear the words ‘L. Ron Hubbard’, ‘Scientology’, or ‘Dianetics’. Resources and interest in the former church member community seem to be increasingly directed toward efforts to expose Scientology as a scam, expose and denigrate church leadership as the why for Scientology’s unworkable or destructive aspects, or even – of late – attempting to resurrect a weak imitation of the original.

In the interim so that nobody feels like a mystery is being dangled, virtually everything I have to publish can easily be derived from everything I have already written (in three books and nearly 1,100 blog posts; including its recommended reading).   I don’t purport to have brilliant, original new ideas.  I think all of them that are useful to moving to greater heights have already been better articulated by others.   My ideas simply have to do with connecting dots that have long since been created by others.  I have decided to write the books to organize those thoughts for the benefit of a) those ingrained by Scientology with the need for structure, construct and maps,  b) the loud few, and those they confuse, who insist it is dangerous to read my words because ‘I don’t know where Marty is going’, and c) (and perhaps most importantly in the long term) future integral practitioners who could benefit others by incorporating workable ideas of L. Ron Hubbard into programs of human betterment.

The two future books I have mentioned will largely focus on integration, evolution and transcendence.  The previous three books and the blog have focused more on identification, association and differentiation so as to possibly awaken folk to the necessity or wisdom of integrating, evolving, and transcending.   I will continue to attempt to do that on the blog as time permits.

192 Comments

Posted in Casablanca, healing, independents, Integral Theory, l. ron hubbard, Scientology, tech, the future

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Why Bother?

Posted on July 1, 2013 by | 233 comments

Some hard-core ‘independent’ Scientologists have ruminated  among themselves lately the idea that I am somehow trying to bring down L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology.  Otherwise, they reason,  ‘why wouldn’t he just move on and let it be?’   I am going to try to address this concern as directly and succinctly as I can.

L. Ron Hubbard developed a number of unique, aggressive methods for tackling problems of the human psyche.   Used intelligently there is nothing that compares to their direct, predictable effectiveness in intensifying present awareness.

However, there is a potential trap in the fields of therapy and spiritual practices discussed by Ken Wilber in his Kosmic Consciousness interview series that applies in spades to Scientology.  In segment eight of the series, Wilber speaks of people attaining ecstatic, exalted altered states in their particular discipline that they consider to be so miraculous as to be without compare.  They are convinced that they have found the only way, which results in a sort of tunnel vision and puts a figurative ceiling on their own continued growth and development.  Such people become opinionated, exclusive and intolerant – ultimately repelling others from experiencing the transcendence they experienced and losing whatever they gained in the process.

This trap is particularly acute in Scientology, because along with the peak and plateau experiences it delivers, its scripture is saturated with reinforcement of this sense of only-one way and superiority to mere mortals.  As intensively and effectively as Scientology can focus an individual’s attention and concentration, it just as intensively and effectively conditions those new found abilities onto worshipping and defending to the death the construct that made them possible.

In an ironic way, the zealous, judgmental, super egoic, ‘I will save you if I have to kill you’ mentality of the advanced Scientologist serves as testament to the effectiveness of that which they are hell-bent on defending and promoting.

Just as assuredly, it is evidence that somewhere along the line the science of ‘knowing how to know’ is converted into the practice of ‘knowing so best that we had better not be exposed to learning anything else and not allow anyone else to either’.

The observation I am trying to share is that it is this vicious cycle that is at the root of the demise of the methodologies of Dianetics and Scientology.  It is the cause of every other ill – disconnection, fair game, Simon Bolivar, violence in management, money is everything,  image is everything, you name it – every other ‘situation’ that folk continually mistake for the ‘why.’

I have witnessed tremendous relief, rehabilitated ability to learn, and renewed capacity for transcendence by getting this ‘why’ understood by many who have devoted their lives to Scientology.   I have also effectively helped a number of people with Hubbard methods by using them – sans the only-one religious indoctrination;  people who knew little to nothing of Dianetics and Scientology when they came to me.

It is for this reason that I believe the ideas of L. Ron Hubbard are doomed to the extent they are not used in an integral (integrated) fashion.   The whole package – taken as the whole package requires it be taken – leads inevitably to all of the ills ex-scientologists, those effected by Scientologists, and Scientologists (including and especially independent ones) seem to make a pastime out of clamoring about.

Why do I bother?  Because I want to help free those who are stuck in this Scientology dichotomy, and because I don’t want to see the demise of ideas and discoveries that can be effective in helping people in the future.

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Posted in Casablanca, disconnection, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, justice, Ken Wilber, philosophy, policy, Scientology, tech, the future

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What’s Going On?

Posted on June 29, 2013 by | 151 comments

I came across an interesting passage in a book – the passage originally published in 1963 – by a prominent psychologist predicting quantum advancements in human consciousness by the marrying of religious and philosophic wisdom with rapidly evolving science. It is fifty years later and it seems Scientology is only now beginning to go through the throes of differentiating the adults (truth seeking spiritualists and values inspired scientists) from the children (flat earth religionists and reductionist-mechanistic inclined scientists).  Scientology seems, to steal a verse from U2, stuck in a moment that it can’t get out of.  From Religions, Values, and Peak-Experiences, by Abraham H. Maslow:

These two groups (sophisticated theologians and sophisticated scientists) seem to be coming closer and closer together in their conception of the universe as ‘organismic’, as having some kind of unity and integration, as growing and evolving and having direction and, therefore, having some kind of ‘meaning.’ Whether or not to call this integration ‘God’ finally gets to be an arbitrary decision and a personal indulgence determined by one’s personal myths.  John Dewey, an agnostic, decided for strategic and communicative purposes to retain the word ‘God’, defining it in a naturalistic way.  Others have decided against using it also for strategic reasons.  What we wind up with is a new situation in the history of the problem in which a ‘serious’ Buddhist let us say, one who is concerned with ‘ultimate concerns’ and with Tillich’s ‘dimensions of depth’, is more co-religionist to a ‘serious’ agnostic than he is to a conventional, superficial, other-directed Buddhist for whom religion is only habit or custom, i.e., behavior.

Indeed, these ‘serious’ people are coming so close together as to suggest that they are becoming a single party of mankind, the earnest ones, the seeking, the questioning, probing ones, the ones who are not sure, the ones with a ‘tragic sense of life’, the explorers of the depths and of the heights, the ‘saving remnant.’  The other party then is made up of all the superficial, the moment-bound, the herebound ones, those who are totally absorbed with the trivial, those who are ‘plated with piety, not alloyed with it’, those who are reduced to the concrete, to the momentary, and to the immediately selfish.  Almost, we could say, we wind up with adults, on the one hand, and children, on the other. 

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Posted in Casablanca, ethics, healing, independents, Integral Theory, philosophy, propaganda, psychs, quotations, Scientology, the future, the Reformation, the world

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The Great Decompression

Posted on June 27, 2013 by | 158 comments

I borrowed, or coined by inspiration, from Viktor Frankl (Man’s Search For Meaning) the idea that decompression was the first and most important step in recovering from the Scientology experience with an upward trajectory.  Frankl – having himself survived years of imprisonment in Nazi concentration camps, and attempted to help others similarly situated upon release – noted that an adjustment period was critical for someone coming out of a strictly controlled environment to a relatively free society.  He likened it to a deep sea diver submerged for several hours far beneath the surface.  One must bring the diver back out from under the tremendous pressure he has adjusted to on a gradient basis or he will suffer from Decompression Sickness, also known as the bends. Similarly, if a person imprisoned – even mentally – in inhumane conditions, conditioned to think and act in super-compliant ways while developing all manner of deceitful (albeit as justifiable as they may be) means to survive, comes out acting like he owns earth he is going to be in for big, ugly and possibly devastating losses.

Over time I have exchanged observations with other counselors about a number of folks that we guided and assisted through the Scientology Underground Railroad – or Decompression Road.  One pattern we all have observed, and taken terrible losses on, is Scientologists entering the family of humanity with the exclusive, arrogant and judgmental attitudes they developed to survive in Scientology culture.  All of us have expended a great deal of resource and effort in helping to clean up messes such attitudes have created, and in getting people who exhibit those attitudes back on their paths after the inevitable smack downs society tends to deliver in response.   For those going through that process now, and who are discomforted absent orientation to L. Ron Hubbard references, everything I have noted thus far in this article is in complete accord with Scientology notions of the efficacy of tackling problems,development and life on a gradient scale; and even the ethics conditions formulas (see Non- Existence condition and formula).

One of the first posts on the Milestone 2/iscientology blog – created largely in protest of my books and this forum – was a piece attempting to discredit this idea of decompression as some psych-based attempt to belittle Operating Thetans and put people at introverted effect.  It reasoned that former Sea Org members and public OTs who bought into the idea they could use a tad of decompression as part of their gradient entry into the community of fellow human beings were victims of an attempt to put them at groveling effect of the psych-indoctrinated ‘wog’ world.  By God, the MS2ers proclaimed, we need to bring society up to our standards, Revenimus! (In keeping perhaps with the Class VIII indoctrination, ‘you are the people who own the planet’ – see Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior).  This mentality of wanting to cling to the inside is understandable (see e.g. the films  The Shawshank Redemption and One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest – I know you have all seen them, but watch them again with the Scientology experience in mind).

These thoughts arose when considering a general response to the many inquiries I have received lately asking me which of my three books ought to be read in what sequence.   That includes a lot of non-Scientologists asking what book might appeal to or help a Scientologist family member or friend. My answer is always a question, eliciting information on where the person is at on the decompression process.  When I know something about their circumstances I can recommend the single book that I think might help the person concerned.  They do not necessarily flow one to the next in the order they were written.  And all three of them aren’t for everybody necessarily.

So here is a short generalized guide to whom I believe the three books individually might appeal to, and hopefully help  –  in alignment to degrees of decompression already experienced by the concerned person.

The Scientology Reformation.

This book was written primarily with Scientologists still connected with the church in mind.  It is anchored upon L. Ron Hubbard references and attempts, on a gradient basis, to get a Scientologist to observe for himself or herself just how far adrift Scientology Inc has strayed from the intent and purposes memorialized (at least in some places) by its founder.  It introduces hope that one need not reject all of Scientology, in order to escape and even to take a stand against its abuses.

What Is Wrong With Scientology? Healing Through Understanding

This book would likely be dropped like a radioactive rock by the time a Scientologist in good standing read the first sentence of the introduction.   It is addressed more to people who are already out of the church, and for whom turning back is no option.  It is a detailed presentation and analysis of the features of Scientology that tend toward entrapment.   It describes in some detail the sum and substance of what Scientology’s effective processes are  in order to set the table for analyzing what is wrong with it and how it is ultimately used to entrap.   If one only mindlessly makes a break and declares a wholesale rejection of everything scientology, one tends to become as glued to it as ever, albeit from the opposition vector.  That is because he or she never took the time to understand and come to grips with what salutary aspects of it may have kept one pursuing it in the first place.  If one understands that, one can transcend the experience in a more desirable state than victimhood.

Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior

Because of the personal, autobiographical nature of this book and its consequent gradual, real time and subjective introduction to Scientology this can inform someone never involved in the subject with a perspective they will get nowhere else.  That is, what attracts and keeps one involved in the subject.   Popular books and films have been woefully two-dimensional and inaccurate in that regard.  They only focus on fear factors, which for those involved had next to zero effect in garnering their voluntary, self-determined involvement (the involvement that creates the most lasting effect on someone).  Many who have read it remarked that reading another’s real time experience of getting into, developing into a crusader for, and then transcending out of it prompted them to review their own experience more honestly, fully and rationally.  And that had a liberating effect upon them.

Memoirs is probably akin to a post-doctorate extension of the ‘what is wrong with Scientology’ analysis.  But not with a lot of opinion.  For the most part I let the facts do the talking.

While I still regularly use the term, and the model, of ‘decompression’ I am more often using it with a modifier to better describe what it is I am trying to accomplish: Decompression with an upward trajectory.

Link to all three books:

Mark Rathbun books on scientology

 

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Posted in black dianetics, Casablanca, disconnection, healing, independents, Integral Theory, jason beghe, justice, l. ron hubbard, Memoirs of a Scientology Warrior, Scientology, tech, the future, the Reformation, Uncategorized, Viktor Frankl, What Is Wrong With Scientology?

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