Interesting. That is a philosophical viewpoint the world has heard before Scientology. But instead of honestly promoting his philosophy of life, LRH invented a system for enticing lambs with benign self-help concepts and then feeding them to his might-makes-right machine. (I apologize to any Scientologists who might never have experienced abuse, if there are any, in that they are simply accessing a self-help regime.)

I appreciate that Mike and Leah are careful to compare Scientology to other religions, which have their own faults, but aren’t created as systems of exploitation. They go wrong when corrupt people rise to power and when they fail to evolve more acceptance of gays and others, but they weren’t invented as means of exploitation.

Cynthia, Scientology does believe in spirits. Spiritual insights as most people would understand the term, are another matter.

Hubbard’s worldview and philosphy are ego-centered, might-makes-right and end-justifies-the-means. “Material things are yours for the asking. Men are your slaves.” was literally his Affirmation.

I was interested to have it spelled out clearly in the podcast whether Scientology has spiritual insights as it implies it does by calling itself a church. Sounds like it really doesn’t.

And I’m concluding that any church that enforces a practice of spending a lot of time in study is coercive. Never mind the beatings and the money (not that I would ever actually dismiss those aspects). The time you spend studying your religion should be inspired and carried out for personal reasons. One of the DSM criteria for an addiction is that you spend a lot of time in the process of feeding and recovering from it. A cult enforces an addictive mentality on its members.

Just take lots of pinks and greys!

Hi Mike! I always love your posts!!

Thanks Amy. Great to see you commenting here!

As an ex-SeaOrg who’s nominally Taoist these days thank you for bringing this up succinctly ✌️

I was worried that I might need to pull out my demo kit and clay table to understand exactly wtf he was saying.

(joke)

@ToddCray Thank you. Precisely. I was thinking similarly reading the misguided, strident and confident remarks of Jim Meskimen. Ugh. He is (as many of us Former-Ins also fell victim to) parroting what he has been told—not seen, observed, or experienced, as the “Integrity” reference and “Obnosis (Observing the Obvious) Drill” tells us we must do. No doubt, Jim and his equally kind and patient wife, Tamra, have many times been told these mischaracterizing things about the IRS and C of S history, including in ongoing Int’l Assoc of Scientologists (IAS) fundraising thrashings and extortions. I think I read in a Celebrity magazine from CC Int that he and his wife are some super high-level of IAS “status,” “silver patron meritorious” or some such. How do people do it? I know he and his wife are working actors in Los Angeles, but still, they do not seem like individuals who can easily afford giving a couple of million dollars to the insatiable I.A.S.

When I see a situation like this, a Jim Meskimen and it is so typical, I ponder: How can he and his family ever see on their way to break free? They have literally dedicated so much (as have so many others); then you don’t want to make yourself wrong for all this. And what a wrong-headed move, warm and playful (he is a humorist) Jim Meskimen broadcasting himself out on the STAND website. Scientology does not own the term or concept “blind spot,” and this is one.

Maybe we can inspire the adept Hollywood storyteller, Jordan Peele to do an “escape Scientology” version of his successful 2017 horror film, “Get Out.” The original 1999 film, “The Matrix” was one a lot of Scientologists identified with and “claimed” as, “Yeah, look at us, we are so much better than anyone else because we know about and are getting out of ‘the Matrix’.” It takes, as those of us in this blog community know, a whole ‘nother level of bright thinking to recognize: “You may have been taken out of ONE matrix but…it was merely to put you into a DIFFERENT matrix where you could be further and better CONTROLLED and made to stay put.”