Mike Rinder's Blog

Something Can Be Done About It

The Bubble Is Leaking

By 68 Comments

keep-calm-were-going-nowhere- (1)

Sacramento “Ideal” org completed no more than 375 “Bridge steps” in a whole year.  And that was “Highest Ever.”

A Bridge step is defined as:  “anything on the Bridge: Basics, Life Improvement Courses, Life Repair, Purification Rundown, Student Hat and on up, etc.”

This is 7 completions per week. SEVEN. Including Life Improvement Courses. And this is an “ideal” org — an org that is “the best” and “dominated” in the “Ideal Org arena” (whatever that is…) with “massive upstats.”

For a 10 million dollar plus investment, this is not much of a return. They could have paid 375 people $1000 a piece to come in and take  a course and been WAY ahead of the game (might have even gotten some resigns and made more than their money back….)

 More evidence that straight up and vertical is nowhere in sight.

The fundamentalist church of scientology is limp. No matter how many grand speeches Dear Leader delivers or how many times they tell the media about their “11,000 orgs and missions and under the leadership of Mr. Miscavige scientology is experiencing its greatest time of growth ever”, the real story keeps leaking out (and to the sheeple who actually go into these buildings, it is staring them right in the face, but they have been brainwashed into believing what they see IS massive expansion — hence emails like the one below).

Limp orgs are limp.

Re: A Personal Letter to all of you from Virginia Jensen, ED Sacramento Foundation

Dear Friends,

I have not written a letter to you in awhile and felt that it was time to do so, and I have a plan I want to share with you. (Yes, it has everything to do with Sacramento Org winning the Birthday Game 2015).

Now, as you already know Sacramento Org is very well known for being The Best at whatever we put our minds to do and working as a team to accomplish it. We dominated in the Ideal Org arena, then our incredible Tech Team, now IAS. I say it is time to continue these massive upstats and also take the World Stage and win LRH’s Birthday Game 2015!

In LRH’s Birthday Game Program the very first target LRH gives us is:

                               1. THINK BIG!

So here is the game plan…

For LRH’s Birthday 2015, which will be his 104th Birthday, we are going to complete 1004 Bridge steps in the Foundation Org!!! (A Bridge step is anything on the Bridge: Basics, Life Improvement Courses, Life Repair, Purification Rundown, Student Hat and on up, etc.). This would be unprecedented expansion and also over 3X of what we did last year, which was highest ever.

The only reason the Org and staff are here is for you to travel up the Bridge. We want to take this even more passionately this year and rocket you even faster up the Bridge! This is more real than ever with the release of Golden Age of Tech Phase II.

Please take a look in a new unit of time at what Bridge progress you want to accomplish this new LRH Birthday year. Remember LRH’s advice:

1. THINK BIG.

If you need a technical consultation please contact the Deputy Executive Director, Elizabeth Smith, and she will get you scheduled. I would love to hear from you so please feel free to write to me.

ARC,

Virginia Jensen
Executive Director
Sacramento Foundation

Comments

  1. Well I don’t know if any of you spotted this but and I quote

    “(A Bridge step is anything on the Bridge: Basics, Life Improvement Courses, Life Repair, Purification Rundown, Student Hat and on up, etc.).

    By LRH definition the “Basics, Life Improvement Courses and life repair” ARE NOT STEPS ON THE BRIDGE.

    The purif and up are the Bridge. It right there in LRH policy about what a bridge step is. I should know as I counted that as a stat while in the SO. No div six course counts as a bridge step. Until you start on the Purif or the Student hat you are not considered a Bridge start.

    I f’ing hate false reports. Sac org was as slow as molasses while I was on staff at AOLA. They had Solo 1 people on that course for years. The Best. Talk about blowing smoke up their own asses.

    Reply

  3. I think it is only fair that Sacramento’s new HE (Highest Ever) stats should have an asterisk prominently displayed in the official Birthday Game record books, to signify that these HEs were attained solely because of Ideal Org Conditions,

    ML, 1.1 (One Point Won)

    Reply

  4. Their artful and frequent usage of the modifyer, “unprecedented” is annoying. Anyone who has done Objectives knows that anything and everything that occurs on the time track is “unprecedented” .It can appear to have similarities or it can appear to be identical but it never is, Nothing that happens has ever happened before,so they’re not lying, overtly, but by trumpeting something as “unprecedented” they are communicating that something big, wonderful, amazing, etc. has occurred, some astounding statistic has been achieved. It is a covert lie and it annoys the hell out of me. Thank you.

    Reply

  7. She’s parroting that “eval” dm did recently ( I think I read about it here), where the why was, that the church wasn’t thinking large enough, or something to that effect. I shudder to think of dimwit dm doing an eval …..but she’s probably just repeating the company line because she’s been ordered to. So much for passionate caring.

    Reply

  9. So here is the game plan…

    For LRH’s Birthday 2015, which will be his 104th Birthday, we are going to complete 1004 Bridge steps …

    Not based on what is needed and wanted by the public, but what management and statistics call for, hence all this “We need you to … | You need to …” nonsense.

    Could you imagine McDonalds giving their clientele quotas-for-play to buy more Big Macs and Filet-of-Fishs to save the burgerworld from going down the sh*tter by fundraising for new “Ideal Drive-Thru’s”? And we expect these targets to be met !!!

    There is nothing whatsoever “Service” about current Scientology. You repay for session GAEs, GAT, Books, no psych-busting results or any demonstrable products of the IAS … and whatever else I haven’t mentioned here.

    “We NEED you to accept and be compliant letting us defraud you“.

    Reply

  10. You know, Sacramento org from my experience is one of the best of the ideal Orgs, too. Which really tells you something when they are coming in with stats like this over the last year. The Sac org staff are hard-working and take a lot of pride in what they do, have always wanted to get things done on their own, without management interference or bypass. From what I remember, they have the largest Flag trained Tech team. They did a bunch of their own fundraising. They are in the capitol of the state of California, a very affluent region with direct access to state and even federal government contacts. In other words, total kool-aid drinkers in an area with absolutely zero excuses to not be the largest and most successful org in the West US, if not the world. They have every reason to boom and no reasons not to. And yet, they have been completely hoodwinked. So you’d think they’d be the first to open their eyes to the fact that these stats suck ass and that this “Ideal Org strategy” is for the birds. I’m still holding out hope that Virginia and her staff will somehow open their eyes.

    Reply

  11. Seems they’re really working hard on putting lipstick on this pig. Looks like they’re going for a full make over with a Bridge Step as anything like one of those squirrelly Botwo Life Improvement Courses.

    They are probably counting LRH books read as well. Then of course the “Basics” and the myriad of extension courses connected to it.

    Funny they don’t mention auditing of any kind since if anyone ever gets audited its rarely completed any way.

    As one of your posts succinctly put it they’ve managed to turn it into a “Bridge to Nowhere”.

    Yet with all this padding of the stats they are making less than 7 whatever “Bridge Steps” a week.

    Pathetic really.

    Pretty much in line with what I used to read in the Mags when I got before I was dead filed yet again.

    Maybe it was for telling some Sea Org member I ran into at the Glendale Galleria handing out Dianetics promo for some reason that I felt Miscavige should be Comm Eved for all the High Crimes he’s committed.

    You know just making conversation 😉

    Anyway the Org Rags I used to get would have all these “completions” listed that were mainly Div VI courses with one or two Div IV comps. You know tucked there in the back with some article by Ron while the rest of it it was devoted to the Dope of Scientology opening another “Ideal Org” in somewhere like Acturus or something and giving some cryptic speech that would take a bank of NSA’s best Cray Super Computers to decipher.

    Reply

  12. “The only reason the Org and staff are here is for you to travel up the Bridge.”
    When staff say this, they really believe it. For a number of reasons:
    “Scientology’s priceless, the more you outflow the more you inflow, when
    you go up the bridge you’ll be smarter and have more ability to make $$” etc etc.
    What gets me is that it’s obvious, despite how much they want to believe all of this,
    that it’s not working. What the Kool Aid guzzlers refuse to see is that it’s just not viable in this society.
    It would be OK if LRH said that Scientology is for the rich and super rich. Then I could see it.
    Cause that’s what it is. You can’t clear a planet with a product that is out of the reach of most.
    Very few want to train to be auditors because they have to charge what the COS says to.
    Very few want to be PC’s because they have to pay what the COS says to.
    IT’S NOT VIABLE. If auditors could learn to audit, and then make “just” a decent living at it,
    think of how many auditors and PC’s there would be. At $25 an hour that’s still over 50 grand
    a year. How many would love to audit for that. Add another $5 or $10 per PC per C/S
    and you’ve got a viable situation where you’d have lots of auditors and PC’s.
    But no, if you’re an auditor, you have to charge $400.00 an hour or not audit at all.
    Good plan!!! I think the COS should have their own line of chewing gum. Sell it for $250 a pack.
    Think of the quality of customer they’d get!

    Reply

      • That’s right MJ.

        When dealing with the Church these days you wouldn’t exactly be sure what’s in that pretty lil’ gum wrapper.

        If anything at all 😉

        ORC,

        Yeah back in the day the Org used to set prices based on what the lower middle class earned per month nationally.

        Probably the same thing today. Only the prices are set for Bel Aire, Beverly Hills and West Wood.

        Reply

  13. “We dominated in the Ideal Org arena, then our incredible Tech Team, now IAS.”

    Mike, does this mean that the IAS donation scam is part of the LRH birthday game now, or just that this particular SP group is being recognized as the biggest SP group that conned more $ out of public than any other SP group?

    Reply

  14. They don’t mention anything higher than Student Hat as, by then, the person has blown or simply, doesn’t show up.

    The ‘Basics’ have nothing to do with the Bridge Steps at all. I can see a totally brand new person trying to get through some of the books that, actually, are too steep a gradient and nothing the he immediately will use.

    The only straight up and vertical is the ‘very badly planned’ sequences of training and auditing. Ain’t working man. But this is good as less people will be harmed with the monumental alter iss of Black Heart’s ‘bridge’.

    Reply

  15. You know if you viewed CofS like any other business, say a restaurant, they either have a product that the general public desires/needs/wants, or they don’t. Like a restaurant that had a incident of food poisoning, or rude waiters, the word gets around. They may have the best intentions and the best risotto in town, but the public perception will stick on the negative.

    So too with the church. An individual just can’t walk in take a course or get some auditing without having to be subjected to all the unwanted stuff (e.g. IAS, Ideal Org donos, more donos, etc). Quite quickly he’s going to have to “get with the program” and become a Scn Warrior and forfeit his other dynamics. It’s the whole package that the general public finds repulsive. Nobody is interested in spending their hard earned money this way.

    This “may” have worked in 1960, but times have changed, people have changed. The church, fundamentally, has not. By today’s standards they just appear like an isolated wacko cult, desperate for new people and money.

    Reply

  16. We want to take this even more passionately this year and rocket you even faster up the Bridge!

    “Passionately”? Does this mean they’re going to open a brothel, or accomplish their goals through religious martyrdom?

    Reply

  17. The level of denial within the Scientology bubble is stunning. You hear the same thing from orgs all over the world. “So great! We completed someone on a course!!!” And this after spending 10 or even 20 million dollars to build a huge Scientology center. The number of staff keeps shrinking, the number of existing public keeps shrinking, the number of new public has flatlined.

    The orgs are just empty shells and pale shadows of what they were in the 70’s and very early 80’s before DM began his “purges” at that time. Somehow those who remain in the bubble cannot concieve that they have been mis-lead despite the evidence staring them straight in the face.

    I believe that the remaining Miscavige faithful have moved into a form of bunker mentality. Inside they are thinking, “this is not working, but I am too far down this road to stop now. I will just keep going, follow orders and everything will work out OK”. So when they get a call and get told to disconnect from some old timer, classed auditor, they think “wow, that is really strange, but I will just follow orders and I am sure it will come out ok”. And as they do so the downward slide accelerates. Faster and faster the existing staff disappear, the existing public disappear and the new public disappear. Down, down down they go, all the while saying ” I will just follow orders and I am sure this is just a passing bad spot”. Down and down.

    Meantime they are using disconnection to shatter the lives of anyone who does poke up his head and say ” hold on, this is messed up!”

    There is an old quote from LRH where he mentions that the theety-wheetie non-confront type person is right next door to the suppressive. It is interesting to see the theetie-wheetie, super non-confront Miscavige supporters smashing people’s lives, breaking up families and destroying the livelihoods of anyone who steps out of line.

    It is sanctimonious evil.

    Perhaps once upon a time, before the internet you could do shitty things and pretend you are “the most ethical group on the planet”. But this is the information age and fortunately such deceptions are hard to keep up.

    The motto of Miscavige Scientology is “hear no evil, see not evil and definitley speak no evil, or we will crush you”.

    What a horrible way to go through life.

    Reply

    • The other day I had a vision of David Miscavige as a spider. He throws out his sticky web of photoshopped images, lies, and promises. The “fly” is attracted to the show, but then realizes something’s wrong. As it begins to investigate, the net is tightened slightly. The more the “fly” begins to squirm and squiggle – the tighter the net is wrapped. Finally, the “fly” cannot get away at all – thoroughly wrapped up for dinner and drained of its vital juices. Admittedly, this is just a metaphor.

      Reply

  20. “The only reason the Org and staff are here is for you to travel up the Bridge.” Stated purpose is a LIE. Otherwise the Orgs and Missions would have MUTINIED by now. The purpose of the INDEPENDENT SCIENTOLOGY NETWORK is to help you travel up the bridge AFTER you have been lied to, deceived, defrauded, disheartened and disconnected by the Radical Corporate Scientology Crime Syndicate. Graduate the Cult that is masquerading as the Church. It’s your next step on the bridge.

    Reply

  21. I guess Virginia isn’t planning on having her staff to be able to afford to eat, or pay rent next year either.

    Reply

    • “Wasn’t the Sacramento area (i.e. COSMOD) one of the largest and most thriving Scientology fields in the 1970s, with hundreds of people on course and dozens of new people coming in every week?”

      Yes. I did the Levels and Internships at Sacramento. Tons of people, tons of auditing.

      Reply

      • And let’s not forget that the bulk of those completions are almost certainly Basics courses, i.e. reading a Basics book or listening to a Basics lecture series. And even at that, since one person can “complete” a Basics book or lecture series and rack up 10-15 “completions” in a year, in all likelihood there were probably about 30-50 people that “completed a Bridge step” (i.e. a Basics course) in the past year. And that includes the take-home courses (i.e. extension courses).

        And who wants to bet that of those 30-50 people, nearly all of them were (a) Old Timers and/or the children of Old Timers who had read the books before, and/or (b) were on the Org’s OT Committee and thus felt compelled to do the “new courses” for the sole purpose of increasing the Org’s stats?

        Wasn’t the Sacramento area (i.e. COSMOD) one of the largest and most thriving Scientology fields in the 1970s, with hundreds of people on course and dozens of new people coming in every week?

        If so, my how times have changed …

        Reply

  26. Don’t forget to count Extension Course completions as bridge steps. Wouldn’t want you being deprived of overlooked production. ML, Intergalactic Statistical Survey Chief.

    Reply

  27. Gah! The failed grammar is killing me! I can’t believe these are supposed to be functioning adults, I really can’t. It makes me weep.

    Reply

  28. I love the leaks that you post. On the ZA blog they are being hailed as proof that sometimes disconnection doesn’t work, that people continue to stay in comm with you despite the policy. I just wish they didn’t come at the price of disconnection from your family.

    Reply

    • Disconnection does not work at all. I bet Miscarriage never even intended it to work. He is a bitchy little boy pissed off at people who want to play with someone else. If they don’t play with him they can’t play with anyone! What a jerk.

      Reply

  29. Please correct me if I’m wrong but isn’t one of the key purposes of the Birthday Game to 5.4X all stats? Here she “thinks BIG!!!!” and sets a target that is only 3X.

    Reply

    • Yes, 5.4x is the LRH-stated make-break point. So postulating…and publishing…a 3x target is treason. Bye, bye, Virginia…

      Reply

  30. In reality if this Org started booming and public flooded in droves,
    this would happen. D.M.would rip off the staff, they would move up into Key positions
    then after a run of upstat’s, they are relegated to the “HOLE” by D.M.
    This pattern is know and repeated , time after time.

    Reply

  31. I know it’s peevish to pick on grammar and diction, etc, but I just have to laugh that these great communicators couldn’t get a passing grade in an 8th grade English class. The Dunning-Kruger Effect is in full display here.

    Reply

    • The Dunning-Kruger effect, named after David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University, occurs where people fail to adequately assess their level of competence — or specifically, their incompetence — at a task and thus consider themselves much more competent than everyone else. This lack of awareness is attributed to their lower level of competence robbing them of the ability to critically analyze their performance, leading to a significant overestimate [of] themselves. Put more crudely, they’re too stupid to realize they’re stupid. [definition taken from http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect%5D

      Reply

      • This might lead one to wonder if the perception of the effect is relative to the perceiver, and by extension, ultimately, to conclude that all are unimportant, even insignificant in a manner akin to the views held by those who assert there is no universal or objective right and wrong in life, and that all is relative to the individual’s perception, and self-assertion, the latter of which views pervades the wild kingdom. An alternate field of view might be that there is an objective or universal truth, the perception of which includes an estimation of one’s own worth by measure of perception of truth, but, importantly, assertion of the existence and importance of truth takes precedence in all cases over the impression given of one’s own worth. Put more practically, it pays to recognize that when you are right, you are right, but modesty and consideration of others is a virtue. Thank you for your virtuous explanation of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

        Reply

  32. You say “the only reason the staff are here is to get you up the Bridge”…but our experience is NO one can get up a Bridge because there has been no Bridge for 63 years so you $old Lies and committed FRAUD! How can anyone trust anyone in Scientology? That is why we left!

    Also – the only reason Staff are there is to GET OUR MONEY and give it to David Miscavige so he can hire attorney’s and private investigator’s to harass and sue to keep the SECRET!

    There has been No Bridge! And you are okay with that? WOW! Now, that is impressive!

    The reason for Ideal Orgs are “assets to sell of for David Miscavige and Scientology needs your money to keep the “show on the road”!

    L Ron Hubbard was not making light of that statement – it is quite the SHOW!

    Reply

  33. Actually they could have taken the $10,000,000 donated to make an “ideal org” and paid 10,000 people a $1,000 to do a course. If they had done that they would have delivered a paid service to as many public in 2013 as all the rest of Scientology combined.

    Reply

  34. Even if this org managed to accomplish their goal for March 2015, it won’t help them grow. From what I have seen and heard over the years, anytime any activity connected with scn starts doing well, an Int Mission is sent in and the whole thing falls apart. SOP.

    Reply

    • Yes, this is the way it is and hopefully not always will be. Actually one can replace the Int Mission with any SO mission. I never experienced one that actually changed anything for the better. They were always a complete bunch of aggressive, nasty incompetents that ripped up the Org and made it horrible to be on staff as their whys were always wrong. If only they had left us alone we would have boomed the Org.

      Reply

  35. These emails where either the sender is known by name or the email address is given… does anyone on here ever email these people to point out the truth of what their stats show?

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *