"You guys are here because you get it! They're out there because they don't get it!" All eleven Foundation staff present that night stand silent, dutifully offering their undivided attention. Muster. A new week. A fresh start. Six whole days until the next weekly staff meeting! Last night's week-ending session had been typically dismal. Mostly consisting of level or slightly dipping graphs. Truly good people with good intention, pouring their hearts into their posts for little or no return. Unwittingly, swimming upstream all the while. (More on that later). Collective staff introversion. It must be OUR fault.There was one highlight at last night's meeting, however. Div 6 had received one new piece of raw meat, ready for indoctrination into the exciting world of fund-raising, altered tech and make-wrong. Hey, a stat's a stat!
"You guys get it and I'm proud of you." One can see some slight nods of agreement in the periphery. What one can't see or even begin to understand is how it all adds up. A Scientology org in a major metropolitan area, over fifty years in the making, with only eleven staff in attendance. Some of the non-attendees are out moonlighting, adding a little personal security to their less-than-meager staff pay. One guy is in a panic, late for post and stuck in traffic, having just scrambled out of his eight-hour-a-day "wog" job. He will certainly be receiving the appropriate scowls from his seniors when he finally does arrive. Perhaps even being pulled into a private back room for a "talking to". Wog jobs and traffic; the stuff of PTSness, bank, out-ethics and being effect ......the stuff of VICTIMS! And some staff are just....well.....not there anymore. Perhaps on extended leave to handle the almighty dollar, or lack therof. Perhaps for any number of other, unspoken reasons. One can only speculate.
But all of that was about to change! A new promise. A new hope. A New OT Vlll, fresh off the boat! Our new E/D. Our Savior. A handsome, sharply-dressed, smooth-talking, multi-millionaire!
"And you guys are the heroes." he continues. "The do-ers. The responsible ones. THEY...(a righteous finger pointing outside the Ivory Tower toward the bleak nether regions), are in the stands. Observing. Waiting. Watching. Spectators! Making it harder for the rest of us to do our jobs." It is a weak attempt at paraphrasing the founder. This always adds significance and altitude. After all, who, in Scientology, doesn't respect LRH? Toss in a little tech, corrupted and out of context, with your "Command Intention" drubbings and you can motivate obedient robots to do practically anything.
Practically ANYTHING!
"Okay everybody. So, let's get on those phones for the next sixty minutes and get everybody and their brother to Saturday's event! We need to get this dream FUNDED! Tone 40!" Ahhh, the DREAM. Our Ideal Org. Touted as being the ultimate solution to man's plight. "So we need EVERYBODY there. Got it?" This is the point at which that sickening feeling creeps into one's stomach, facing the hard reality of what the next hour will bring. "Somebody get on the intercom and announce call-in, all-hands, no exceptions!" A vein hope there might be more staff SOMEWHERE in the building. A comm lag. Then a few "Yeah's" go around the room. A few "Wooohoooo's". A meager attempt. "Oohhh.......come ON people," announces our new savior. "You can do better than THAT!"
"YEAH!!!! WOOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!!!!"... in unison. Praise the lord.
One is then handed a sheet of paper listing their quota and the numbers to call. As the distinctly reluctant body-motion about the room clearly signifies, it will be a long sixty minutes for everybody.
The savior, "Oh.....here's the best part! Barb, tell 'em what they get!" Barb, a staged grin on her face, the distinct features of the Cheshire Cat rounding out her cheeks, teeth gleaming. "CHOCOLATE!" Huh? What the hell did she just say? We get what? "Chocolate!" She holds up a sparkling glass bowl full of bite-size Hershey bars. She looks like one of the models on an aberrated episode of The Price Is Right. "You get ONE for every confirm!" She bellowes, authoritatively.
Come ON down! You're the next contestant on.......... Give Us Your Life Savings In Exchange For A Big, Beautiful, Empty Box!
Chocolate!
Too bad half the staff are on the newest, utterly strict, diet fad going around orgs at the time. Chocolate is definitely NOT on the menu plan.
Move forward 30 minutes.....an eternity. The savior, cirulating around the cramped lobby area, drops by our little call-in section. Enter missed-withhold phenomena. We've been loafing, joking, avoiding at all cost. One just instinctively knows something ain't quite right about all this fund-raising stuff. In this case, back-off seems to be quite natural. The Qual Sec, along with the rest of us, quickly grabs the receiver and starts to dial, looking sheepishly up at the rapidly-approaching, sharply-dressed authority figure.
Secretly, one hopes to God nobody will answer their phone on the other end. It's dinner time. People are just arriving home from the long work day. Parents are with their children! If you've ever received such a call, at such a time, you know that they are NEVER enjoyable. They are an exercise in FORCE, subtle intimidation and make-wrong. And don't even mention the PR implications. Especially if, say, your non-Scientology spouse or your buddies are sitting right next to you when the call comes in! What....you have your sister's wedding to go to on Saturday night? Soooooo.....you're not ON BOARD, eh?
Right about now, one might ask why the Qual Sec, and every other Sec for that matter, isn't on post, wearing his hat. Instead, they're all doing call-in. Even the C/S is playing along, getting his Ivory hands dirty. Don't even why! Nothing good can come of it. The company-line answer, although not the correct one, is that Div 6 only has ONE GUY and he needs help. Of course, the Div 6 guy isn't exactly supposed to be spending his time corralling the public to fund-raisers either!
The savior hovers over your immediate group, arms folded, a stern look on his face, while the minions do DM's bidding. You finish leaving a voice mail and quickly look to your list for the next number, abundantly aware of the exact facial expression going on directly above. Then, for just an instant, the savior let's down his guard while everyone else is "inviting" the field to Saturday night's financial slaughter. He leans down and quietly tells you a dirty one-liner. It has something to do with homosexuals. Your political skills ensue and you give a slight chuckle to appease him. You mention that you think Ellen DeGeneres is quite funny and talented. "She was just awesome in Finding Nemo." you exclaim, clinging to some degree of self-respect. He responds with "Yeah, that's fine. But I would never go into business with her."
Author's note: Yep, it's all true!
"Because she's gay?" you ask. "Well yeah, of course," he responds. "She's 1.1." The generality hits you in the gut but you "agree" and hope he'll move on to the next group so that you can resume your loafing. Some savior! If one thinks that's bad, we won't even bother getting into the politics being pushed by org leaders these days. It's just too messy. It's either DM's way or you must have some missed withholds creeping around somewhere. At the very least you'll get the dreaded look of disaproval for thinking outside the box.
Shortly thereafter, you lose all hope for any improvement of the overall scene. The savior, while he started off full of theta and hope, is just another DM robot now. You decide to take a part-time job, conveniently situated right during post time. You fade away. You soon route-off. Fortunately your freeloaders debt is pretty small. You get it handled, though it doesn't seem right or fair. And then you decide to fully leave the group altogether. After a while, you begin spotting many false considerations which have been insidiously installed within you by the dreaded Group Think. "All homosexuals are automatically 1.1" for example. You begin caring once again about your true passions, your true purposes, your true friends. The "wog" world begins to become brighter and more acceptable, despite its obvious, myriad outpoints, while at the same time the church begins to get hazy, dark and less significant. You cognite, "Oh yeah.....people are cool. People are smart. People are creative. And they don't have to be in the church to be alert, aware, awake and alive.". It's the exact opposite of brain-washing. It's brain-DRYING! It takes a little time but you just go out and do some living. You get busy doing what you love to do. You snap out of the group think in varying degrees as the days, weeks and months go by. And from there you begin taking a look at how you can actually help fix Scientology for real. An action, utterly shunned on the inside.
As mentioned at the outset of this piece, Scientology staff today are swimming upstream. One step forward, two steps back. Being at the ground level of this religion for two decades, one instinctively and thoroughly knows the intimate structure and overall mental status of this 3rd Dynamic group. All beings have the innate ability to enact the personal integrity within themselves. All thetans KNOW. But ethics blind spots are a dime a dozen under the current regime. Big, beautiful boxes are being given undue attention and energy, while the important item, PEOPLE, are being tossed by the wayside and treated....well.....like the above descriptions.
In all fairness, creating a group that could successfully clear a world populace is damn near impossible to begin with. That's where LRH's brilliant tech comes in. But when the religion's sole leader is actively bypassing orgs, ordering pc's to Flag for their quickied Grades, assigning the hat of "fund-raiser" to the SO and org staffs around the world, mis-using OT's and Opinion Leaders and too many other violations or flat-out reversals of policy to mention, it stops us cold. Destroys our world-wide reputation. Creates Civil Wars in the field. And caves beings in. Sounds like the exact definition of INSANITY by LRH from the Tech Dictionary, def 1:"the overt or covert but always complex and continuous determination to harm or destroy".
One needs to dry-out their brains quickly. To pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and begin to search for the truth. One needs to be the solution. There's work to be done! But only if done intelligently and ethically and most important......constructively!
Written by Idle Org