"Help us out of a JAM!"....he exclaimed, a large glass jar of the purple condiment held high in one hand for all to see, a microphone in the other. The guarded crowd at tonight's "event" chortled and moaned at the attempted humor, a few faint claps in the distance. Our New OT Vlll Foundation E/D was auctioning off a jar of jam, and then a bag of potato chips, in order to buy his way into having an "Ideal Org". "CHIP in!" He shouts. He proceeds to begin reading off the ingredients on the back of the bag, coercing the slightly disbelieving audience to mumble "Mmmmmm" in unison. And no...there is no dubbing anything in here. There are roughly 70 witnesses to this hideous display of personal-integrity gone bad. And then it was on to his neck tie. Around Twelve-hundred dollars, it seems, was the final price. His own wife was kind enough to bail him out of that one.
In all the green vol's one can read, you will find nothing by our founder to even remotely support the above.
"Whooo's NEXT!?!" The speaker system distorted under the strain. In the first several rows, random sets of shoulders jolted upward, then dropped, as if to say, "Ouch!". But nobody had quite the audacity to actually cover their ears while sitting in full view of their peers. It was our Day E/D and his all-too-familiar tactic of scaring the bejeezus out of an entire room full of good people by throttling the mic and utterly screaming into it. And all the while, the fund-raising In-Charge was at the ready, stage left, with whiteboard and marker, anxiously scanning the audience for the next hand to go up, as well as the scrutinizing scowls coming from the uniforms in the back of the room. Pressure! Lots of pressure! A big haul was needed that night. And after 6 straight years of fund-raising, these guys had itdown. The Day E/D continued..."What you're actually doing is taking energy from your 1st and 2nd Dynamic and transferring it over to your 3rd and 4th!!! So......who's next!!!" Yep. He actually said this. Shouted it, in fact. One could offer an interpretation of the actual meaning: "We've utterly failed to stick to LRH and have thus taken up DM's unusual solutions as our new operating basis. So, you turkeys had better go along with it and reward us with your upstat, personal production!" And the event grinds on...
In these scenarios it is best to have an escape plan. You socialize and mingle around the food line early in the evening. You say all the right things to your local opinion leaders and you schmooze with the current SO missionaires. You prove that you can toe that line as well as the next guy. You tuck your integrity into your back pocket and you wonder if things will ever get any better. Unfortunately you doubt it, that is, if you have any ability whatsoever to predict 3rd Dynamic trends. You sit through the main portion of the event, the Chaos Merchant tactics. You learn all about the dangerous environment and how the new buildings will bring about world peace, save the economy and attract the CEOs of Starbucks, Microsoft and Boeing!
It must be true! The slightly menacing lady from Int Management took the stage and said so.
You know what comes next. Fund-raising! You wonder if you're the only one in the room who feels like they just had their last firing-squad incident fully restimulated. But, before too long, you realize that you are actually just picking up on the way the entire room feels. As the fund-raising team takes the stage, you pull out your cell phone and feign an important call. You head for the restroom, Tone 40 all the way. Head down, never to make eye contact with the various staffers you pass by. But, you turn off at the last second and head for the back hallway. It's long, it's dark. There's a side door nobody is guarding. You're out! You spot a few staffers outside having cigarettes at 30 yards. You hear your name called from the distance and you turn so that the small group can see you're "on the phone". A minute later, you slink your way off the grounds, across the street and into your carefully-placed automobile. Never park in the main lot. You'll never get out alive! You give a sigh of relief. You did it! You were seen by all the important people. You are on-record for having been there. You won't have to offer any guilt-ridden explanations for why you didn't attend. You got out before you had to watch the slaughter of your friends' bank accounts and dignity for the umpteenth time. You head to the nearest bar and order a cold one, wondering how the poor folks at the event are making out and just how late it will go. You quickly shy away from that thought and suddenly get real interested in the football game on the flatscreen. You wonder when you'll summon up the courage to make your break for real. When you'll peacefully walk away from the whole scene altogether. You know the true tech works. You know you are on the verge of the Great Middle Path that Marty so eloquently wrote about. You don't even recognize what your religion has become any more. You want to tell everyone the truth. You can't. Or...can you? Your non-Scientology friends act interested in your plight out of basic courtesy but they couldn't possibly have enough reality to even begin to separate LRH from DM. And so, you back-off on that line altogether. You realize that you are alone.
For twenty years you were there. You donated money to the IAS to save the world even though you didn't have any. You gave years of service. You helped. You defended. You stood up for LRH. You really did. And now, you are sneaking away. Have you become a coward? A victim? Is it a case of "poor little me"? You feel blatantly covert, abandoning your friends..... your group, your personal integrity.
Your personal integrity? Really? Are you actually abandoning your personal integrity? Well, let's take a look at that. According to LRH, in the Tech Dictionary, he states that Personal Integrity, "...is knowing what you know. What you know is what you know, and to have the courage to know and say what you have observed. And that is integrity and there is no other integrity".
Well.... that about sums things up. What you now know is that your "friends" and your "group" (all very good people), have perhaps given up their personal integrity. And even though it's uncomfortable as hell, you walk away. And after a few months of feeling like you've lost your mind, you read and learn from those on the Middle Path. It helps tremendously. And then, you begin to write, you begin to share, you begin to help and you know you're gonna be okay...
Written by Idle Org