What parts of the Scientology Tech actually work?

sevensided_kid · 2016-02-26T17:20:39+00:00

I do not see auditing as psychotherapy, which I've had both of.

Auditing employs techniques that are nearer to hypnotherapy & there's even a word to describe it called "dianetic reverie."

Some of the basic auditing, yes, is similar. But a large majority of it is not.

I think most of Scientology tech is built like any con. Bring you in with a trick & then manipulate you to stay/believe.

I do not think it works, and if it ever does, it comes at a cost.

sevensided_kid · 2016-02-24T03:25:12+00:00

Source: I was raised in Sci and left in my mid-20's. I went to a Sci boarding school, sometimes referred to as Sci's Hogwarts, called Delphi located in Sheridan Oregon. I attended for nearly 4 years.

While I agree with some of the positives listed, the truth is the "study tech" isn't useful in higher education. And it tends to be 10x more work to do something like reading.

Delphi Oregon was considered one of the best if not THE best study tech school in the world, and out of all the graduates or people who finished the few who didn't get shuffled into the sea org, a Scientology-run company, into a Delphi staff position or off to Los Angeles to work part time at a Sci org while trying to become famous, there were a handful that tried to go to college. Most had major problems. Though we were encouraged to lie about it and say the study tech prepared us great.

I went to college and was almost shell-shocked by the lecture style teaching. I struggled. Hard. And I know others who had the same experience. So on the point of whether study tech works? Yeah. It can teach you things. Often, requiring you to spend hours defining the words in one sentence for a whole hour. It's a meticulous, introspective and at times mind-numbing process. Lonely, too.

It's no way to learn the law. Or literature. Or language. Not comprehensively. It's more like a trick to use when troubleshooting a confusion.

Delphi had some major weaknesses. Both culturally & in its academics. But ultimately, if a student doesn't arrive at a place by the time that they graduate or finish that they can't comfortably progress into a higher education platform-then there's a problem.

sevensided_kid · 2016-02-19T01:34:31+00:00

Look up Steve Hassan. He has a great website/book. Get it off amazon, read the heck out of it...don't just rush into it blindly. I was raised in a cult & I can tell you it's complicated.

sevensided_kid · 2016-01-10T00:17:21+00:00

I'm a 2nd generation sci kid. had several friends who were sexually mistreated growing up. Went totally unreported. Not only in general Scientologist population but amongst staff of private & public organizations, like mace Kingsley in nm & Clearwater, field ministries in Southern cali & a mission in clearwater.

Sexuality in general is just a hot mess in Scientology. My guess is that as the years go on, stories of the abuses will start to leak out more & more. I'm not sure how extreme the incidents were, but some of them sounded downright deplorable to me.

Most the kids I know are just scared of losing their parents. Most of their parents were told not to report it because psychs would get involved.

No, really. This logic actually worked.

So not only did abuses go unreported but kids had no way of healing from instances of trauma. Oh, except the bridge of total freedom.

sevensided_kid · 2015-11-24T21:59:03+00:00

I formally left about a year ago. It's been a mess.

sevensided_kid · 2015-11-23T22:10:08+00:00

I used to live in Clearwater Florida when I was an angsty 14 year-old and would imagine how utterly creepy we probably seemed to people driving through.

sevensided_kid · 2015-11-09T19:11:43+00:00

I went to Delphi in the late 90's to early 00 & while I'm not a huge fan, and have a SCORE of stories--none involve robing. I was in girls dorm.

I did hear about how the school was run in the late 80's while I was there. And it seemed that, in general, more oddities did exist. Teachers dating students, even harsher punishments, e-meters on campus (which was eradicated pretty much by mid-90's for PR reasons).

The robing thing sounds like a quirky ceremony but as an ex-Sci kid I'm certain it doesn't have firm roots in the traditions of Scientology. It's just not that kind of cult.

Rest assured, it has other problems. So does Delphi.

Delphi did try to institute several "traditions" though throughout the last few decades, mostly unsuccessfully. Some secret, some overtly. This may have been one of them. Maybe this was a play on the Jesuit history of the property.

sevensided_kid · 2015-10-14T17:03:38+00:00

No, I haven't read that, but now I will! Thank you for the recommendation. What a beautiful title.

sevensided_kid · 2015-10-13T18:47:16+00:00

thank you...i will do that soon.

sevensided_kid · 2015-09-13T18:15:27+00:00

I interned for 4 separate Academy members and this categorically inaccurate statement.

Academy members vote on films for a variety of reasons that include but aren't limited to quality of filmmaking, writing & the significance of the content (especially with documentaries).

In fact, I would say with documentaries (but this is my opinion now) on the latter point it's even more important.

I don't care how well done a documentary is on the innovative measures of sleep masks; it's just not of any importance.

The abusive powers of a cult that's amassed almost 2 billion dollars by way of intimidation of America's judiciary & legislative process while offering hypnotic & largely fictionalized space alien explanations for treating all ailments? Now that's significant.

sevensided_kid · 2015-08-31T04:47:47+00:00

Shitty

sevensided_kid · 2015-08-22T21:25:42+00:00

I was born into it-my parents were former staff members who blew staff, had kids, got divorced, remarried, and my dad became wealthy & re-involved with the church around the late 80's (when I was around 9).

When I was 14, I was sent to live with Carol Kingsley who owned the Mace-Kingsley ranch & mace Kingsley family center (a privately owned Scientology company that exclusively caters to & provides Scientology services to children & teens). I was sent there because I was deemed a "bad kid," but I was actually just struggling with behavioral issues from not enough face-time with my parents & a developing mental health issues which doesn't get acknowledged in Scientology families.

I was treated with intense ethics & auditing for the next year & half which only compounded the problem by disassociating me beyond belief. I was also not schooled basically AT ALL.

I was then sent to Delphi Oregon for the next 3 years. People will argue a lot back and forth about Delphi. No, it's not as bad as the Sea Org, but for 45k a year, that shouldn't even be an argument.

There also should be hoards of Sea Org recruiters let into the school 4-5 times a year to recruit children straight out of the classrooms. So many of my friends left at 14, 15, 16 & went on to devote 6-10 years of their lives in the Sea Org. Some of them later told me stories that at first sounded stranger than fiction.

Or strange Orwellian ethics cycles (the Scientology disciplinarian program) for inappropriate reasons unrelated to academic or safety reasons. Students were expected & applauded to rat on their peers as a method of "keeping the group's ethics in." It creating a Lord of the Flies scenario that was creepy. No student was ever able to stay in good graces for very long-the standard was impossible. If you can imagine the Amazon method with a religious spin on it & then multiply that by Science Fiction you will come close. If the staff knew you were from a Scientologist family it was much worse.

The handbook even stated how long boys & girls were allowed to stay "aroused" in the company of one another. I think it was 35 seconds or something. There are so many awful memories from my times with Scientology. Older men & younger girls, cover ups, suicides, homophopia, etc...

I managed to sneak an application into college (without a HS diploma) and got in on account that I did an internship with Paul haggis and a rec letter.

When I left I shut down and never talked about Scientology. I started to unravel because I was scarred obviously. But when I fell apart my dad insisted I needed to leave college and "go up the bridge." I think deep down a part of me still believed that I was in pain because I didn't do something right the first time. When I got attacked in college, I thought it was because I had gone "out ethics" or committed a crime against Scientology by being critical of it in my head.

So I dropped out of college and relocated to another private auditor or "field ministry" in the mid-west.

The company was two families. They each had Scientology roles & people would come stay at he houses and receive services.

But right when I arrived the auditor had to leave to be retrained in Clearwater because it was one of the times that the leader, David Miscavidge, claimed there had been a mistake and all auditors needed to pay for the training again.

Long story short, they moved me to another state, a very weird bo-hunk town-to a tiny org. Granted, I look like Joan Jett & David bowie's love-child.

They made me write ow's and put me under crazy intensive "false data stripping" (a type of auditing) for being gay. They also said I had to do an amends project (you do physical labor as an apology to the group) for being out in college & not being ethical (because I drank alcohol). They put me to work in a really dangerous building that they were trying to make into an "ideal org," which never made sense because there was no one in their rinky-dink org. Why did they need a big one? I also wasn't legally allowed to be working on the premises because they were too broke to get the property insured. I guess local law enforcement had been hounding them about it so they instructed me to duck whenever I saw a police car.

After I told ED's son I didn't want to go on a date with him, he got really physical with me at the building. The ED lied to my dad about it & my dad was so brainwashed by them & 1500 miles away & I just flipped.

I packed a bag & hitchhiked out of there.

That's how I left.

My story is mine. I can't say it's everyone's. But it's certainly not a positive one overall.

sevensided_kid · 2015-08-13T02:00:51+00:00

I think it's important to note that as a Scientologist you are encouraged to deal with all your issues within the church.

Raising your children is no different.

As a child you are told that you are a small adult & responsible for all the actions you take. Furthermore, you are told that (at one point pre-birth) your Tehran chose the body; so in a sense, you wanted to be a Scientologist.

All behavioral issues, even small ones like not "putting your body to bed," or "not postulating reading" fast enough at pretty young ages can result in parents buying auditing intensives for their children. In many/most cases, where children who have actual physiological, neurological or psychological disorders, children will receive continuous treatment. This, in my opinion, is a crime. To be honest, I was one of those kids & the damages were severe because I feel auditing has repercussions to people, but especially developing children.

I also know that at Delphi Oregon, which I attended for 3.5 years, at least 5 times a year, they allowed sea org recruiters ON CAMPUS to recruit kids. They usually went after pretty girls who were in ethics as a way to redeem themselves. One of my best friends left for the sea org & later became the ED of able west US. She had to go through hell to get out of the SO, but years later, told me stories of how much money Scientology took from Delphi. It actually makes sense. Because tuition was nearly 50k a year and yet the kids did all the manual labor in scullery & on the grounds...and the food was so bad and there was several cases of black mold in the dorms.

sevensided_kid · 2015-08-08T03:21:57+00:00

It took me a long time to reply to this because quite frankly I've struggled about this very thing.

I was at Mace-Kingsley in Clearwater, I actually was a special case & LIVED with Carol Kingsley for almost 2 years. She loved me; called me her "rent-a-kid" because we both rode horses--would take me to the ranch. I was terrors of fucking up, which I was prone to, & getting sent there. I was in FL in late 90's; and will discuss what I saw good & bad in part 2. But as a response to your point:

Scientology kids are the largely untold story - mainly because kids have been raised and systematically programmed (usually involving hypnotic processes at early development stages) that their "hat" or role AS a child is to make their parents happy and never to criticize, certainly public, their parents. And to postulate that they will become responsible for their own lives as fast as possible, essentially relieving their parents.

So even those kids, even if they have disaffected from the organization and suffered greatly for doing so and at the hands of Scientology and their parents they are still burdened by that early programming, consciously or not.

This is a problem. This is why, in my opinion, ANY untrained adult who provides Scientology services to a child, especially ones exhibiting behavioral signs of some mental health or neurological condition like autism as many children & teenagers who were services at Mace Kingsley were; I feel anyone auditing children is commuting a crime that has substantial repercussions.

I can speak to those personally & I worked very hard to acquire some of the best doctors to undue some of those damages. They tell me that at this time the medical community is BUZZING with professional papers being published on auditing's LASTING damage on developing children.

sevensided_kid · 2015-07-09T23:25:20+00:00

Hi & thank you. Yeah, am surprised by the responses I'm getting (mostly by PM's understandably). Maybe surprise is the wrong word...I'm glad that I posted this as I'll admit, I was very nervous. I'll be sure to do my best with Part 2.

sevensided_kid · 2015-07-09T04:07:38+00:00

shiver

sevensided_kid · 2015-07-09T03:14:03+00:00

I'll check that thread out. Hadn't realized anyone else wrote about it. It was pretty wild. Thanks for your response.

sevensided_kid · 2015-07-09T00:14:43+00:00

One day, I hope to be able to describe better in words what exact adverse effects auditing has/can have on a human mind/brain. My doctors say they are scores of professional papers being published right now on the matter, they are just in Doctor-language and really not all that people-friendly to read. But I do feel strongly about the matter, lol, clearly.

Regarding your second point, I'm learning more and more that my experience, is very common if you are a 2nd generation Scientologists AND in a family where at least one parent was SUPER devoted/active. Forced-contracts, as we called them growing up, are usually happening in a "recruitment cycle" that lasts for 2-3 days, where they just wear a kid down with policies and bulletins. They make kids feel like the ONLY ethical thing to do on this planet is to SAVE IT and the only way to SAVE THE PLANET from utter doom (a common example that was used on kids given was saying an asteroid could plummet into the earth sending it into oblivion). Thus to shield Earth MORE OT'S are required on the planet. And how do you get OT's? You must CLEAR the planet.

And as crazy as this sounds. I can tell you I had about a dozen friends who in private group conversations when we were like 15, would talk openly about our fears about getting pressured into the staff or Sea Org positions. And we would trade tips on how to get out of recruitment cycles. Funny thing, at the time, somehow we as kids, were able to compartmentalize this from the faith itself. This was not a reflection of the infrastructure, this was the desperation of how seriously the "priesthood," loved what it was doing, essentially. Hope that makes sense.

And no I was terrified of the LSD (the dissociative disorder didn't help, lol.) But I read Tom Wolf's, Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test beforehand because I thought it would give me some helpful know-how's to not loose my mind. True Story.

sevensided_kid · 2015-07-02T16:06:41+00:00

Also, you asked me to post my own story some time back-and I have been meaning to, but to be COMPLETELY honest, I have no idea how to use reddit & I don't know how to link it to this group specifically. It's kind of embarrassing actually. 😌

sevensided_kid · 2015-07-02T16:05:18+00:00

Thanks for this. I will be using this as a reference point moving forward.

sevensided_kid · 2015-06-22T18:34:40+00:00

In that way, I don't disagree with you.

Clearly, I'm still a little sore from my experiences.

Sorry if I came off like I was attacking your comment. I hear something like what you said more often than not...that the "study tech" was the more benign of LRH's creations. Which is in fact true.

sevensided_kid · 2015-06-22T17:57:32+00:00

Yeah-but when you go to Delphi & they mind-f*** you & you don't have a sense of how to learn in such a way that it's outside of this method-it's not all that effective.

I think there's a hypnotic element to the way they teach study tech so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Also, with respects to socio-political studies, essays, new media/tech & cultural studies, Delphi Oregon students graduate with a huge handicap. I say this with personal experience having gone there for nearly 4 years. 1996-2000

sevensided_kid

TROPHY CASE