Wow that was alot of reading since my last post. I agree with TKheinsa on most of her statements regarding freezone vs. the church. There are some very intriguing ideas and tech but the church just turned it into a pyramid money-making machine period.

Since you never DID respond to my question to you Mike, I'll just tell you what these "OT"s said.

I asked them if I'd hold all your idologies and beliefs, except that I do not participate in the church or donate ANY money, I would achieve the same enlightenment and/or be accepted. I also asked them if I read from the Bible regularly if that would conflict at all with the church. These so-called "OT's" instantly changed their tone and hastened their conversation with me. As soon as I had no interest in giving them money, they did not want me. 1 of the 3 told me to leave that the church was not for me and accused me of being an SP. But see THAT'S not what turned me off.

I can never follow a church that does not at least respect those that do not follow. I was raised Catholic and although my ideals and beliefs are FAR from that church now, the priests and clergy always respected those that do not believe. They would try to get people to convert and even recruit actively ... but no Catholic priest I've ever known would ask, say, a Baptist or a Protestant or a Scientologist to leave the physical grounds of the church. How can you respect yourself when you can't respect others? So much for that world full of peace you say you are trying to achieve ...

*Again this is just my own personal experience. Maybe I just found the 3 donkey-holes of Scn. And maybe the 15 or so Catholic clergy members I've known were all saints (in the figurative sense). YMMV.

You reminded me of something that I was going to post but forgot to.

I was escorted out of ASHO and told never to return again. I cried buckets of tears because of the upsets I was having and I was losing my friends and future auditng. I did not know of the freezone then.

Then the person I was staying with across the street from that org threw me out in the street with no where to go. I was over 2000 miles away from home with little money. None for a hotel. I was lucky I found a place and changed my flight and came home.

I was told I was trash and so this trash is not going to be a member of that church again unless a true reform happens. I will know when that happens as my auditor will have to get his confront up and handle things.

Anyhow I know that is not going to happen.I am glad I was never as blind as mike. I thought it was just my local org but it is all over the place and the higher you the worse it is. The net is changing the fact we only see the local scene.

See all religions have some truth. Scien has a lot of truth but they do not have the full answers. To go back to what we once were is not possible now but at least one can get closer to it. Anyhow you are right here.

One thing though is managment will only help the upstats. The members on their own do help on their own but it is against policy to do so. I had such help several times so I can't say the members are bad people. Many of them are just gullible and controlled.

I do not want to hear of the volunteer ministers. Like Wamart that is done for PR. I also asked for help for my parents from them. Since it was me asking they would not help. They said they would then I heard nothing. So they lie as they say they help everyone.

Maybe one day I will put my story out in a book. It is big enough to.

I will stay in the freezone because there is one good word in it and that word is, "free".

Barb

Originally posted by Fiverz
Wow that was alot of reading since my last post. I agree with TKheinsa on most of her statements regarding freezone vs. the church. There are some very intriguing ideas and tech but the church just turned it into a pyramid money-making machine period.

Since you never DID respond to my question to you Mike, I'll just tell you what these "OT"s said.

I asked them if I'd hold all your idologies and beliefs, except that I do not participate in the church or donate ANY money, I would achieve the same enlightenment and/or be accepted. I also asked them if I read from the Bible regularly if that would conflict at all with the church. These so-called "OT's" instantly changed their tone and hastened their conversation with me. As soon as I had no interest in giving them money, they did not want me. 1 of the 3 told me to leave that the church was not for me and accused me of being an SP. But see THAT'S not what turned me off.

I can never follow a church that does not at least respect those that do not follow. I was raised Catholic and although my ideals and beliefs are FAR from that church now, the priests and clergy always respected those that do not believe. They would try to get people to convert and even recruit actively ... but no Catholic priest I've ever known would ask, say, a Baptist or a Protestant or a Scientologist to leave the physical grounds of the church. How can you respect yourself when you can't respect others? So much for that world full of peace you say you are trying to achieve ...

*Again this is just my own personal experience. Maybe I just found the 3 donkey-holes of Scn. And maybe the 15 or so Catholic clergy members I've known were all saints (in the figurative sense). YMMV.

[edit on 24-6-2006 by TKheinsa]

[edit on 24-6-2006 by TKheinsa]

wierd ideas you have here thread starter...none of which are believable

This is a list of how to identify a "Exploitive, Abusive Group" - if these criteria meet Scientology, it's certainly not my fault...

Cult Tactics:

• getting the recruit to agree that the state of the world or the state of their own personal condition is undesirable; telling them what they need to do to make themselves or the world better
• keeping the member always investing in the future and never really enjoying the present; keeping his mind always on something else
• getting members to believe that the leader alone has the solution(s), and to deny that there could be anything wrong with their leader or their organization
• re-directing the member to remake himself or herself, or to look forward to remaking the world, while actually molding him/her to satisfy the grandiosity or financial aspirations of the leader.

Four main characteristics:

• ISOLATION (control of information; encourages members to devote large amounts of time to the group and to socialize only with group members; often cuts off with family)
• NON-THINKING (members don't study and come to understand on their own, instead believing they've already been given "truth"; avoidance of thoughts that are contrary to the group's beliefs)
• ABSOLUTE OBEDIENCE (questioning, doubt and dissent are strongly discouraged)
• GIVING EXCESSIVELY (tithes and/or offerings/contributions are required to be given to the group)

Other characteristics:

• Focused on a Leader (who often lives in luxury and is not accountable to anyone; members are devoted to this person whom they believe is the ultimate source for truth and enlightenment)
• Exhorted to Strive for Perfection
• Their Doctrine is Considered to be the Ultimate Truth Beyond Questioning
• No Gray Areas (the group has all the answers to the questions)
• Legalism and Control (a member's life is controlled by policies and procedures originating with the leadership)
• Conformity to established practices and beliefs
• A Gap between the picture projected to the general public and the inner reality.
• Preoccupied with Bringing in New Members
• Those Outside the Group are Regarded as Less Enlightened
• Deceptive Fundraising Techniques (members and public assume contributions go to social causes, while most of money goes to the leader and expansion of the group)
• Distinct Hierarchy with the Group
• Secrecy (there is an inner truth and outer truth; a gap between what is projected to the general public and the inner reality known only to the members)
• A System of Merits
• Perceived Persecution
• Increasing Loss of Freedom for a Member (the demands of the group/leader destroy any other relationships or personal growth, and destroy freedom in every significant sense)


As I said, these criteria weren't written aimed directly at any particular group.
My next post will entail Lifton's 8 Criteria for Thought Reform...

This is a list compiled by a medical doctor.

MILIEU CONTROL

• The most basic feature is the control of human communication within an environment
• If the control is extremely intense, it becomes internalized control -- an attempt to manage an individual's inner communication
• Control over all a person sees, hears, reads, writes (information control) creates conflicts in respect to individual autonomy
• Groups express this in several ways: Group process, isolation from other people, psychological pressure, geographical distance or unavailable transportation, sometimes physical pressure
• Often a sequence of events, such as seminars, lectures, group encounters, which become increasingly intense and increasingly isolated, making it extremely difficult-- both physically and psychologically--for one to leave
• Sets up a sense of antagonism with the outside world; it's "us against them"
• Closely connected to the process of individual change (of personality)

MYSTICAL MANIPULATION (Planned spontaneity)

• Extensive personal manipulation
• Seeks to promote specific patterns of behavior and emotion in such a way that it appears to have arisen spontaneously from within the environment, while it actually has been orchestrated
• Totalist leaders claim to be agents chosen by God, history, or some supernatural force, to carry out the mystical imperative
• The "principles" (God-centered or otherwise) can be put forcibly and claimed exclusively, so that the cult and its beliefs become the only true path to salvation (or enlightenment)
• The individual then develops the psychology of the pawn, and participates actively in the manipulation of others
• The leader who becomes the center of the mystical manipulation (or the person in whose name it is done) can be sometimes more real than an abstract god and therefore attractive to cult members
• Legitimizes the deception used to recruit new members and/or raise funds, and the deception used on the "outside world"

THE DEMAND FOR PURITY

• The world becomes sharply divided into the pure and the impure, the absolutely good (the group/ideology) and the absolutely evil (everything outside the group)
• One must continually change or conform to the group "norm"
• Tendencies towards guilt and shame are used as emotional levers for the group's controlling and manipulative influences
• Once a person has experienced the totalist polarization of good/evil (black/white thinking), he has great difficulty in regaining a more balanced inner sensitivity to the complexities of human morality
• The radical separation of pure/impure is both within the environment (the group) and the individual
• Ties in with the process of confession -- one must confess when one is not conforming

CONFESSION

• Cultic confession is carried beyond its ordinary religious, legal and therapeutic expressions to the point of becoming a cult in itself
• Sessions in which one confesses to one's sin are accompanied by patterns of criticism and self-criticism, generally transpiring within small groups with an active and dynamic thrust toward personal change
• Is an act of symbolic self-surrender
• Makes it virtually impossible to attain a reasonable balance between worth and humility
• A person confessing to various sins of pre-cultic existence can both believe in those sins and be covering over other ideas and feelings that s/he is either unaware of or reluctant to discuss
• Often a person will confess to lesser sins while holding on to other secrets (often criticisms/questions/doubts about the group/leaders that may cause them not to advance to a leadership position) "The more I accuse myself, the more I have a right to judge you"

[edit on 28-9-2006 by BlaznRob]

SACRED SCIENCE

• The totalist milieu maintains an aura of sacredness around its basic doctrine or ideology, holding it as an ultimate moral vision for the ordering of human existence
• Questioning or criticizing those basic assumptions is prohibited
• A reverence is demanded for the ideology/doctrine, the originators of the ideology/doctrine, the present bearers of the ideology/doctrine
• Offers considerable security to young people because it greatly simplifies the world and answers a contemporary need to combine a sacred set of dogmatic principles with a claim to a science embodying the truth about human behavior and human psychology

LOADING THE LANGUAGE

• The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliche (thought-stoppers)
• Repetitiously centered on all-encompassing jargon "The language of non-thought"
• Words are given new meanings -- the outside world does not use the words or phrases in the same way -- it becomes a "group" word or phrase

DOCTRINE OVER PERSON

• Every issue in one's life can be reduced to a single set of principles that have an inner coherence to the point that one can claim the experience of truth and feel it
• The pattern of doctrine over person occurs when there is a conflict between what one feels oneself experiencing and what the doctrine or ideology says one should experience
• If one questions the beliefs of the group or the leaders of the group, one is made to feel that there is something inherently wrong with them to even question -- it is always "turned around" on them and the questioner/criticizer is questioned rather than the questions answered directly
• The underlying assumption is that doctrine/ideology is ultimately more valid, true and real than any aspect of actual human character or human experience and one must subject one's experience to that "truth"
• The experience of contradiction can be immediately associated with guilt
• One is made to feel that doubts are reflections of one's own evil
• When doubt arises, conflicts become intense

DISPENSING OF EXISTENCE

• Since the group has an absolute or totalist vision of truth, those who are not in the group are bound up in evil, are not enlightened, are not saved, and do not have the right to exist "Being verses nothingness"
• Impediments to legitimate being must be pushed away or destroyed
• One outside the group may always receive their right of existence by joining the group
• Fear manipulation -- if one leaves this group, one leaves God or loses their transformation, for something bad will happen to them
• The group is the "elite", outsiders are "of the world", "evil", "unenlightened", etc.

Excerpted from: Thought Reform And The Psychology of Totalism, Chapter 22, (Chapel Hill, 1989)

Of course, this is a from source dealing with psychology... so I Scientologist probably wouldn't believe it just on general principal.

All I did was lay out known guidelines for a cult. I'm sorry if your particular group falls under those guidelines.

Oh, and just for the record: anyone who states that psychology won't be around in 20 years has completely turned off their critical thinking skills. Psychology is one of the fastest growing scientific fields, and more and more people are getting their degrees in said field, and the trend isn't slowing down. Do you honestly believe that in 20 years, all of the 20-somethings getting psychology/psychiatry degrees right now (not to mention the millions who already have them) will have laid down their livliehoods?

Keep in mind the definition of psychology, which is the scientific study of human behavior. Psychology can reliably be dated as beginning as early as Hippocrates in 400BC, perhaps even sooner.

As for the claim that scientology is "huge" and will get "bigger and better every year," Scientology's OWN publications (ie: Advance! Magazine, and Freewinds Completion Records) show clearly that the growth of Scientology has never been "explosive," and Scientology's numbers are actually on the decline.

If you look at the number of churches and missions, the number of those on staff, and the number of members, statistically, you can see the real margin of growth.

Over a 15 year period, the number of churches grew, on average, at the rate of barely 4.8 percent per year. The missions did a little worse. For them the average growth was only 2.6 percent per year.

If we take the number of staff on July 31, 1977 as a base, and compare it with that of 1990, which is 10,224, then the number of staff, from the middle of 1977 to 1992 grew at a rate of 3.8 percent.

Oh, and before I'm accused of using out of date statistics, I used that year range because it incorporated Scientology's largest growth span. Scientology peaked during the late 70's and early 80's. There was a recent surge from 1999-2004, but that was short lived, as 2004's rates were 20% less than 1999's.

US CENSUS data from 1990 and 2001 - shows 55,000 proclaiming Scientologists, but lets go with the number Scientology states: 8 million adherents; just because you mentioned Catholic Church.... they have 1.1 billion members worldwide... looks like Scientology has a long way to go.

One last thing before I finish this post... you said, and I quote "I could debunk every and all of those guidlines and explain them in my sleep."

I challenge you to do just that. It's far easier to say you can debunk something, than to actually do it.

I've done my own research over the years as well, maybe not every single day since that would just make me obsessed. I am intrigued by the whole reptilian thoery, but I'm starting to have some doubts about it. Tell me friend, why do you feel so confident about this answer? You see.. nobody is going to agree with it, Or I mean most people since everyone looks at things in different ways with a different view. Awesome post though, I like it. Think it's very cool sounding. Is it the truth though? well many people find different truths in this world, for me it's the new world order, and reptilians.. more of the NWO though.