The Lies That Bind

I personally didn't realize that Scientology was a fraud until I had a series of personal discoveries and unfortunately they took until about 2013 or so to all occur. I realized in maybe 2010 that a person could be persuaded through sheer repetition to believe something possibly in some circumstances. I saw the NBC T.V. show Heroes and the story of two people that are placed in the mind of one person for years and the two start as enemies but through years of complete isolation and appeal one is successful at persuading the other.

The fictional setting wasn't important, my admission that someone could be persuaded by repetition and isolation countered a decision I had made in 1990 or so that "Hubbard couldn't be persuading us through his books, policies and lectures", I had incorrectly fallen for the false dichotomy of persuasion being either absolutely effective or absolutely ineffective.

In that limited view if Hubbard could persuade people via Scientology doctrine then it had to work 100% of the time on 100% of people and it would follow that Scientology should have immediately conquered the world, or any previous group with infallible persuasion technology. We should all be cultists or Christians or Buddhists or whoever found this first.

I assumed that meant Scientology couldn't be persuasive at all or fraudulent at all. A significant error in reason and some mistakes as they say are built to last.

I had to undo that lynchpin decision which I did when I saw that story decades later on television. I also had a moment in about 2012 or so when I heard about people using religious beliefs to justify behavior and end all consideration of responsibility or consequences for the behavior. I decided the solution to that is to have behavior treated as an individual responsibility and that each person should understand the choice to do anything is their own and that no religion or leader could be ultimately responsible for your actions entirely. I was thinking of it regarding another subject besides Scientology but didn't realize its full implications and a corollary.

I felt odd and strangely unsettled by the decision that no leader or group or doctrine was the end of the line for determining responsibility and meaning of the actions of an individual and that the individual has to fully understand the choices that they make and all the consequences.

I didn't realize it was countering a decision, and series of decisions I made again and again over decades. I had in my first two months in Scientology reached a point on staff status II in which I was trying to learn all the English words in my course and all the Scientology terms and concepts and phrases that I encountered, so I could pass spot checks and star rate checkouts and I had been carefully keeping three distinct categories. One, the ideas I believed in before Scientology, two, the English terms I learned in Scientology word clearing, three, the Scientology terms and concepts I had learned. Really there were several more categories initially, regular ideas from outside Scientology I didn't believe in and others I was undecided on and Scientology ideas I was uncertain of, couldn't see as true and any I saw as acceptable, but unproven.

I was trying to memorize the twenty plus departments and corresponding awareness characteristics of every department in a Scientology organization for a drill and I was listening to the tape Org Board and Livingness, Hubbard described every department as naturally flowing into the next, like a function of nature.

I was completely overwhelmed with confusion and took a shortcut. I STOPPED separating the categories. I had already went from many subtle nuances of maybe and possibly to Scientology, English and ideas outside Scientology. So going from three to one was easy. I categorized everything as right or wrong, with hardly any maybes allowed.

If it was either my old ideas, English or Scientology I gave it equal value. Critical error.

That was a divorce from independent and critical thinking that unfortunately I was left the worse for. I just kept thinking Scientology was proven. The mystical manipulation as Lifton described it in study tech indoctrination was what truly fooled me into thinking Hubbard had found miracles and I went through hundreds of hours on course. It wasn't until I read quite a bit by Jon Atack and took on cognitive dissonance theory and hypnosis that I realized that the brightening up in word clearing is Hubbard inducing confusion via contradictions in his doctrine, then relieving it via misdirection off the confusion onto his stable datum of a misunderstood word to clear. The misunderstood is a fiction, but a confused mind can grasp for order and direction and forgetting the contradiction and focusing on the word temporarily relieves the confusion, which brings a lessening of cognitive dissonance which feels better. If you habitually put confusion out of your mind you see any relief as desirable, without understanding the consequences.

So, I had reached a point after twenty five years in Scientology when I realized that despite having a good job, a great wife and kids and good health I wasn't happy about something. Something just wasn't right and I couldn't put my finger on it. I decided to carefully look at my life and everything in it. I immediately ruled out Scientology as not possibly having a negative effect on my life. A second later I realized I contradicted my earlier decision to look at everything. I realized that impossible as it seemed, maybe there was a negative result from Scientology. It seemed absurd.

But I decided to look at it anyway, just to be thorough, because after all if Scientology wasn't doing anything wrong it couldn't hurt to just look and see what effects it had. I thought I would rapidly rule it out and move on to other things.

I looked at neutral articles on Scientology, no problem. I saw pro Scientology articles. Okay. I ran into the Posse Of Lunatics story at Freedom magazine. Uh oh.

That's where the real trouble started. It didn't make sense to me. Somehow, I backed out bit by bit and undid decision by decision that held me in Scientology for decades. It took hundreds and thousands of decisions to build the prison of the mind and I had to undo the ones that were the foundation for the house of lies to crumble. The lies about the effects of study technology and the phenomena that occur in Scientology were the most insidious and required the most precise targeting to obliterate.

The journey out of fanaticism and zealotry is one someone has to walk themselves and they have to undo the decisions and beliefs that hold their minds captive. It's different for each person.

I had to discover this for myself the hard way. Hopefully as people describe it others will have an easier time leaving Scientology or understanding it if they were never in.

The point about cognitive dissonance is crucial. Most people don't know what cognitive dissonance is or read about the theory and related therapies, but they understand the confused feeling that accompanies something bot seeming quite right, or the anxiety that triggers introspection about something.

Feeling bothered or uneasy about something triggers putting conscious attention on it normally, but the mechanisms of denial and dissociation and extreme submission to authority or extreme conformity to group orthodoxy stifles this usual reaction.

That reaction of feeling uncomfortable physically and overwhelmed, exasperated, confused, reeling, or blank mentally is the manifestation of cognitive dissonance and by any name or even just as a conditioned behavior with no conscious awareness, responding with uncertainty, doubts , questions and hesitation is a component of critical thinking and independent thinking. It's the poor man's critical thinking cue.
In Scientology by reframing the phenomena that triggers doubt, hesitation and questioning Hubbard sabotaged critical thinking at the unconscious level before the conscious mind is even aware it is needed.

Pretty nice guy, huh ?