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My bridge to OTVII

Feral

Rogue male
In my past I have been a story teller, it is what I like to do anyway, a raconteur I think it is called, but like the barbers cat it is all wind and piss,... verbal, and usually around a campfire in the bush or the outback, it is an art form handed down through a long line of semi-literates. I can not write to save my life, so I apologise before hand. Some of you may have already noticed this as I tried to post over the last months, trying to say something important and ending up tripping over the keyboard.

I do, however, have a story worth telling. It is the story of my involvement with the cult of scientology, it spans a quarter of a century where I got most of the way up the bridge and did scores of courses, trained as an auditor and did admin training as well. I hope I show how in this strange environment a man can lose sight of what matters to him, his goals, values and passions, himself and the reason he joined the church in the first place.

The majority of my adult education was inside the church. When you are a scientologist ( the Tom Cruise version ) you have all the answers, and if you don't know something then the answer is at your finger tips in those conveniently indexed volumes and books. You can be sure Ron solved it, one doesn't have to search or evolve a solution to much at all. And I knew Ron's solution were right, KSW said so. That policy gives you the reality that there is one right way and an infinity of wrong ways. You can and must do it the right way, Ron's way. Also, I knew exactly what to think about homosexuals, psychs, the media, labour movements, communists, other practices, victims, the FBI, squirrels, doctors and defectors. I didn't really need to engage my own critical resources. The world and the last several trillion years have been pre-digested and packaged for my easy understanding. As I said, I had all the answers. All in black and white... or red on white, LOL. Anyway, I thought I did, but once I got out I have asked myself; how did I get like this? How did I let my viewpoint get supplanted by someone elses? How did I buy so much information without questioning it?
 

Feral

Rogue male
I will start early, so long as I don't do a Dan Sherman and put anyone to sleep. I think my story's beginning explains how I arrived in the cult and why I hung on so hard to the church and the tech, despite everything.

I had an unsettled childhood, my parents drank and fought....a lot. My father was Italian, he had served his country in WW II and after the war become a merchant sea man. To avoid the poverty in Italy he jumped ship in Perth and a dodgy lawyer had fixed his nationality. He was very unhappy and worked little, he was also given to violent outbursts, one night I recall my brother came from the kitchen and said "mum was choking" I was 9 or 10, we ran in and my father was reviving her, she was gasping for breath tears streaming down her face. Dad was explaining to us how he would never hurt her, it stuck in my mind, I hadn't considered the possibility, why did he say that ? This sort of thing became a regular occurence over the next couple of years.

I remember my father would sit in his armchair in the living room for days on end, drinking red wine. Often with my brother and I at his feet. I had two brothers actually, one was two years younger than me, he was my fathers favourite, I never minded, I was always treated well. My youngest brother was a year younger again. The old man hated him, he was not allowed into the living room, nothing he did was any good, apparently he was meant to be a girl, and he was getting a hiding for it. I remember getting sick and vomitting as a kid after he was treated like that, rejected, banished... I guess I must have found it hard to watch. Dad became dangerously violent to my mother later. So we fled to my grandfather's farm, it was my favourite place in the world, it was a 3600 acre grazing property and for the next few years it became my salvation many times. I worked there on and off, school holidays and I also missed a lot of school when we were avoiding the old man or, later when no one could manage me. I worked as a "jackeroo", an Australian bush term for a stock hand, especially a learner. We worked cattle and sheep, mostly on horse, with dogs, we also cut burrs (thistles) with hoes, eradicated foxes and rabbits as well as putting up miles of fencing. There were two stock men there at the time, and I knocked around with them. I remember going to bed after tea, so sore and tired, aching to my bones, my hands had blistered, which in turn had broken and blistered again, they hurt, but some how it made me feel vital. It was my first love being out on 'the land' with the kangaroos and birdlife. Now at this later part of my life I have returned to the land, on my own place in the outback.
 

Feral

Rogue male
After their divorce my father had taken my mother to court and won visiting rights every second weekend, after an acrimomious battle in which it was conclusively proven by my mother, in my mind at least, that any one in his care was in grave danger. I would not go, my two brothers would as they missed him terribly, my youngest reveling in his fathers new found affection for him. Once they came back with the empty box that was for ammunition, they told mum that dad said that it was for her. It was around that time I asked my mother if she had ever thought of killing herself back when it got rough during the divorce. She told me that she had planned to take all three of us and kill us then herself, because there was no way she would let him get custody of us Although it didn't really sink in at the time, I remember how dark the world looked to me after that day, and I never saw my mother the same way again,.. How bad could it have been for her if that was a solution ? , and I never felt the same level of security after that, I was 12.

My mum remarried, I found it hard to give my step father a fair go and it was mutual. He was, however, incredibly stabilizing to our family and we settled on the coast. At least mum was happy, they hardly ever fought.

One day I went to the city to watch a movie with some friends I was around 14 years old, I was smoking a cigarette and I saw my father on the street . I hid the cig and walked past him, he said hello when he recognised me, I just nodded and walked past. The thing I missed, because I was preoccupied with my own opinion of him and my out ethics, was that he was clearly homeless, from his clothes and careworn look. It was the last time I ever saw him. He had long since stopped visiting my brothers. A couple of years later a barman at a pub where he was a regular, put him out side in an unconscious state at closing time, obviously assuming my father was drunk, which I guess was a regular occurrence. When the barman arrived back the next day for work my father was still there, unconscious. He'd had a brain hemorrhage, I think it was from a tumor that had been growing for years undetected.

He spent the next year in a nursing home. Ironically, the home he was put in was only a few miles from us. I announced to my mother and step father that I wanted to go see him, they forbade it, they were utterly horrified and told me he was a vegetable. In fact none of us went to see him. He died shortly after that.
 

Feral

Rogue male
I had fallen through the cracks in secondary school, left at 15 years old, barely able to read. I started a trade; ship and boatbuilding, but could not assimilate data well enough to pass the tech course, I eventually dropped out after two years. I became very interested in philosophy, I needed answers to life, I was not in sync with the world where people got jobs and had kids, obviously to me this was born of my own failures. I read books , again not understanding much but desperate to learn. I decided to travel and I hitchiked the whole way around Australia . I left the day I turned 18, I worked various itinerant jobs, unloading prawn trawlers in Nth Queensland, labouring and putting up windmills on the big Northern Territory cattle stations.(ranches)

One of them was 5000 square kms, none of these stations had TV or radio, mail came once a week, the black stock men and their families were kept in three sided tin sheds with dirt floors, the only piece of furniture they had was a broken down fridge, they would use it as a wardrobe ! The place was like a small town with a tribe of natives out the back. One day I watched a weather hardened stockman, a white feller, end his day, take his saddle and a gin (an aboriginal woman) in to his cabin, twenty minutes later she left adjusting her clothes. It was a daily routine. She was not allowed to sleep in the white mans digs.

On Saturday night all the ringers (that's the term in the out back for a cowboy) were dressed in their best boots, moleskins and checked shirts, all topped with their swankiest rodeo hats. One of the blackfellers says to me; 'Hey, brother, come to the mess we got a reel to reel ! and we're watching a real good western tonight. It's a John Wayne !' It was the big night out on the station. The only other way to reach the out side world was the 'two way radio', in the mornings particularly there would be a lot of chatter between the neighbours, who in some cases lived 50 miles apart. The flying doctor would come on at 8 or 9am and everyone would have to stop their socializing.




One windmill on that place used to pump out of a billabong it was about a mile long and from the top of the windmill you could see deep into the cool water, there was a fresh water croc that I would watch as he lazily swam around in there. From the windmill you could see his mud slide where he would launch himself into the water. Guess where we had to bathe? Only, when you were down on the water you couldn't see where he was and while we washed after work we'd rib each other "there he is, behind you!" The days would get as hot as 48c so we weren't going to let a little 7 foot fresh water croc stop us from swimming. By the way, a fresh water croc is not going to bite you unless you grab it, but if it was a big salty (salt water croc) you would not survive your second swim, he would wait for you where he last saw you.....for as long as it took. Oh, and the term salt water croc is a misnomer, they also live in fresh water as many dead pommy backpackers have discovered.

In fact I was nearly taken twice by crocs in the North, the funniest time was when we were on an NT (Northern Territory) beach, near Darwin. There was about 15 of us, aboriginals, musicians, hippies, ....pirates and bums, we had spent all our pooled money on grog, so with 2 fishing lines we fed the whole party, grilling the fish and big mud crabs on a fire. Must have been late, most of the party was asleep...pissed. My mate went for a swim, stripped down naked and dived in, he swam around for about twenty minutes, he went out into the deep water too, I could see him in the moonlight, he comes in and sits down on his clothes to drip dry in the tropical air. I look up and see 20 yards away, on the waters edge, just where he came from, a 14 foot salt water croc !!!. I tell him, but he's pissed and says "no, it's a log". I wake up a gin, Naomi, and ask her, she peers through drunken eyes down the beach....." 'sa croc".. slumps back to sleep. After a further argument with me, my mate picks up his ukulele to go and bash this log...to prove what an idiot I am. He gets within 6 feet and the "log" opens its enormous jaws, he freezes,.. my heart stops...my mate looks as though he is trying to disappear. A croc can launch from a still position faster than a horse, but he doesn't, my old mate backs up away another 6 feet, turns around and sprints up the beach yelling 'CROCODILE, CROCODILE". The whole camp erupts into panic, drunks getting up and staggering away and up the track in the pitch black, I was last and sure that the croc was on my heels !!!

So, I wandered, some times hitching 300 kms on dirt roads between towns looking for work in the great outback, I traveled with aborigines, ringers, Pommy backpackers, Carnies and hippies. Sometimes we lived off the land, and sometimes the charity of others. Usually camping out in my swag. I then drifted up and down the east coast and NT for nearly two years. All of a sudden I was heading back home and my world "cracked". I remember it well; I was on the "dingo track", a major trucking route running down through central Queensland. I had been riding on a road train (a cattle truck with a prime mover that pulled three trailers) and was stuck in a little town for several hours (no big deal, once I got stuck in Kunnunurra for six days with only 2 or 3 cars a day going past !) I thought "shit , I can't go home, I got nothing to live for there, and I can't be a drifter my whole life like those old DBs that went from town to town camping with the black fellers and shagging the gins before wearing out their welcome through drunken abuse, so; what the fuck can I do with my life? " I decided at that time to become a counselor, I had no clue ....couldn't read well enough to learn, but I had been in scientology before, only I did not know it.
 

Neo

Silver Meritorious Patron
I love a sunburnt country :)

Looking forward to the rest of your story, Feral.

:drama:

Neo
 

Feral

Rogue male
I love a sunburnt country

A land of sweeping plains

Of rugged mountain ranges

Of droughts and flooding rains

I love her far horizons

I love her jeweled seas

Her beauty and her terror

The wide brown land for me!



Thanks Neo, and you too Tansy!
 
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Feral

Rogue male
When I got back home I scoured the newspapers looking for an opportunity to get a counseling job, no surprise... it wasn't going too well, but then I found it; an ad from the dianetics information center, "counselors wanted". I called up and they were surprisingly obliging. I made an appointment to go in the next day, I got the usual drill; OCAs, life ruins, free lectures etc. I had no money so I did a 3 month contract in exchange for the dianetics course. It was not a standard arrangement but the courseroom was full of travelers and bludgers learning to book one audit. At the end of that I wandered off, I struggled through DMSMH in the next few weeks. It gnawed at me, what if I could go clear ? I went back into the org and told them I wanted to go clear, with dianetics, I was not interested in the other (expensive) stuff, the grades and NED, if this book said it could be done in a handful of hours, then that was going to be the way it would happen. The reg said, in an indignant tone," well, you will have to do the purif", "OK " says I "but only that and dianetics." As you all probably guessed, all the powers of heaven and earth conspired from that point to push me off, not only that path, but every possible path I might follow of my own choosing from that day forth. I was still 19 years old.

As I continued, I like everyone else endured SO and staff recruitment interviews which seemed to have no end. Eventually I was asked to come to a metered interview, I had no idea what it was about. I was very green, I guessed it was more recruitment and I had already confessed to no LSD, so when asked about drugs I tried to hit the jackpot, naming every drug I had ever heard of, hoping to end the constant attempts to press me into the "navy". I was later surprised to be given a "TE" which included a LOT of drug handling. It turned out that I'd lied my way through my first D of P interview !

At this time my folks were going nuts about me being involved with the cult, my step father handed me the newspaper one day. It was a story of kids being locked in a chain locker of a ship by Hubbard, how he was terrified of germs and smells. It told of people being imprisoned and interrogated. It made me feel ill, but I knew it could not be true, the Ron I "knew" was a man of ARC, the friend of mankind. I was a fortress and endured their obvious suppressive attempts to get me out of the church.
 

Feral

Rogue male
Something I have noticed is that people that had major difficulties handled in scientology later cling to the tech after ending their affinity with the church as it was the stable data that ended a long term confusion. So it was for me; scientology taught me to read, scarily enough, it was on the student hat course. I cleared almost every third word on that course. But that gave me an unshakable certainty, that this was the way out of the 'trap' that I was told we were all in. I became the fastest student in the academy, I eventually joined staff with my new wife and trained as an auditor.

This is the doctrine of "the confusion and the stable datum". See, for me in any case, I had a big ruin and a lot of confusion that came with it. The dissem drill plays on this; the FSM (field staff member) or reg asks "what is ruining your life ?" Most "ruins" have a tremendous amount of confusion connected to them, which restimulates at this point, then after listening to the answer the FSM/reg says "scientology can handle that" or some such thing. Confusion and the stable datum. It is much more profound and far reaching when it occurs for real, scientology handled my illiteracy, something which had made me feel very, very stupid for most of my life to that time.

Now the tech on this, which is covered in several areas of scientology; "FPRD" (the false purpose rundown, which is designed to rid one of their bad intentions) , "the prior confusion" and the "service fac tech" (a service fac is a computation generated by a person to deal with an un-confrontable confusion) states that the postulate prevents the confusion being viewed, and the confusion prevents the postulate (stable data) from lifting. So many years later I endured 15 years of solo nots ( one of scientologys highest levels), without a lot of gain and 13 intensives of FPRD (auditing is sold in 12.5 hour blocks called intensives or "ints") and another 4 ints of sec checking (confessional), all on the 6 month eligibilities, plus traveling to flag about 20 times, all of which I hated, add to that the mind bending ethics trips where kids, with no life experience tell you what is expected and how to run your life, based on you session KRs (a KR is a knowledge report, in scientology one is obliged to write up their knowledge of others out ethics, it applies to auditors as well). I went through all that because I had that stable datum "scientology works" and I could not inspect it after that. The big irony which I have since learned, is that the tech that worked for me, was the life work of a couple by the name of Ava and Charles Berner. Ron had plagiarized it. It was only when writing this, that the penny dropped, it was that win which had cemented my loyalty.

Later, when one is in scientology, and various insane things are seen in the administration of the cult, a similar mechanism occurs. You explain away each outpoint you see, the group will help you do it too. This is covered in the data series "the brain strains to explain the illogic". Well it is uncomfortable to be in the "island of sanity" and see things far crazier than out on the street. So you look at the SO exec who is screaming at the staff and the failing org or the OTs that fall far short of anything expected and you say "they are just not trained" "they have MUs' "he did his bridge before the GAT". Each of these postulates/ justifications/explanations, call them what you will PREVENT further inspsection of the area, it also stops you keeping count or connecting these things and viewing them in their sheer number.

Also, when you accept the dogma you know the moment you have any doubts that they are based on your own mis-deeds and the subsequent critical thoughts. So what happens is you interrupt your own thought process to wonder what crimes you have. It is trained into you by the tech and org staff, particularly ethics officers drill it into you. THE RESULT IS THAT YOU DON'T HAVE A CHANCE AT EVALUATING THE CHURCH IMPARTIALLY. Hubbard also pointed out that the breaking down of a persons ability to withold reduces their intelligence, it was an early discovery to do with confessionals and early on there was a remedy for it. Not now. I am sure we are all meant to be as dumb as possible and not able to withold (a mis-deed or a dollar) when it comes to the church. So natural and balanced critical thinking skills are disabled, in the direction of scientology, in any case.

Later when I recovered a bit from this mind fuck I did a thorough doubt condition with the true data of the church's intentions. I was able to make a list of the "activities" of the group, that list was divided into pro and contra survival actions. The contra survival list was many times bigger than the pro list. It surprised me, as I did not include anything I had not seen myself, so nothing I read on the web went into it. I was seeing scientology for the first time. In saying this I am not saying the tech is rot, but it is not the tech to achieve OT or total freedom, a claim whereby it gets most of its mystique. It is what it is, and does what it does, that seems to be a different thing person to person.
 

Feral

Rogue male
Under endless recruitment pressure my wife and I eventually signed a five year contract to work at the org. I trained as a staff auditor and my wife worked in the public division. On reflection, being on staff was the most unproductive and asinine activity of my life.

There was no cramming, no internship, stats were achieved through threat and duress or straight falsification, the phones were often disconnected because the bill was not paid. Auditors had to buy every thing they needed, work sheet paper, silver cert their own meters, I even had to fight to get a room to audit in.

My new wife was on AD COUNCIL with the top execs in the org, mostly women and all having marital difficulty, and it was not long before we were too. We were stretched to the limit, staff hours were 6.15 pm to 10.30pm five nights, then 9am to 6 pm Saturday and Sunday, staff pay was sometimes in the cents, it was no joke. We had bought our first home, a one bed apartment and we both worked to pay for the loans we had taken out before joining staff to buy our bridges to clear, which we had still not achieved, as well as paying our mortgage. So we both worked days, my wife was a marketing graduate and had a big job with a major department store. I laboured, often starting very early. With the pressure to get stats up we seldom left the org before midnight and sometimes as late as 2am, it was murder. I was nearly a zombie, we were a few months into our marriage and were not getting on. We were in fact on the edge of a divorce, and had talked about it many times. Nearly two years in and I was thinking of walking from everything, and becoming an itinerant old DB (degraded being ) was starting to look very appealing.

We were not doing well on our posts, and became the subject of the execs special attention, when, with their data evaluation skills they worked out that the problem was we had other fish to fry; we needed to sell our apartment and move closer to the org, in a shared rental scene with other staff. All the equity I had in the apartment would pay out our debts and then we would be able to buy the additional hours to get to clear. Under duress I put the apartment on the market, within a short period we got a buyer. Suddenly my world went black, I got a knot in my gut and felt my future getting sucked into some evil, cold vortex. I felt like all my plans and goals were being traded for a lifetime of slavery. It was an awful feeling, but I knew I was looking at my future.

I announced to my wife that we were not selling. At that time I was also slated for class 8 training at flag, I knew this could take three or more years and would end my marriage for sure. Pulling out of the flag training flapped for me but I did not care, a month later a real estate boom started and within a year our place doubled in value. Selling it then would have risked cutting us out of home ownership for life.

On reflection, none of these guys actually owned anything, I am sure it bothered them that we did, we were many years younger than them, and clearly not dedicated enough to the cause of clearing the planet. It seemed to me that a total sacrifice was what we were being asked for, later that theme would repeat itself many times and we would be asked to sacrifice many things as a sign of our dedication and participation.
 

uncle sam

Silver Meritorious Patron
Hey Feral...

Good on you! Telling your story -first. I think it's a far more interesting story than mine. I really like the "outback" part-a real and visceral life you had. I'm really looking forward to the rest. Do you know- Sandy Wilhere [that's her married name], her maiden name is Stevens- a fellow Australian?
 

Carmel

Crusader
Hey Feral

Glad to see u posting your story :) :thumbsup:

Hey folks, on or lurkin' on the board - if you're gonna keep truckin' with this and read on, then have some tissues handy :yes:
 

Feral

Rogue male
Hey thanks a lot, I really appreciate the encouragement. There is plenty more to come.

US, I never met Sandy, it was odd as she had been around AOSH ANZO a lot and so had I, even around the same time.
 

Feral

Rogue male
I found it tough to be an auditor, I struggled to do a job that I was proud of, I was unsure of my metering and on several occasions sent videos of my session to the quality control sec of the AO (advanced org) to check out. I was told my metering was good, I know it was not. There was no functioning qual at my org , and I had audited for six months before I got a cramming interview, which again was at the AO. I was meant to be interning but all that any of my seniors were interested in was WDAHs (well done auditing hours). So getting time to actually do my internship actions was impossible. If there were not enough PCs for me to get my hours I would be sent to write OWs, my overts and witholds and write procurement letters. It seemed bizarre to me that there were forty administrative staff, all supposed to get PCs into the org, and there was only three auditors, yet the absense of PCs would be seen totally as the auditors fault, and I do mean fault. I was made to feel even less competent as an auditor than I already did, if I did not have a completely booked line up.

Around this time I was auditing a pc who was not going as well as I would have liked. So not wanting to waste his auditing hours I sent him to ethics where it was decided he needed to write his overts and witholds up. This means he had not been adequately ethical to make the gains he should have, so he had the chance to write down his sins and end cycle on the particular track he had gotten on. The format is that one writes the sin complete with the time, place, form and event. He came back to me wanting a definition of "form". As he was not sure if he was doing it right. I sent him to the qualifications department to get it cleared up. The next day I went to see how he was doing, he was having some trouble and I could see he had not sorted out the form part. I asked what definition he was using, the qual sec had shown him an RTC def. :FORM: behavior, eg, "bad form". WTF? Annoyed I went to see the qual sec. You see the format comes from a scientology axiom, no. 38; truth is the exact time place form and event. I pointed out that the definition used did not fit the axiom, so must be wrong for OWs if it is wrong for the axiom. "NO", says the qual sec "it couldn't be as it came from RTC." I held my ground with him trying to get it corrected, oddly as the debate went on every exec within ear shot came in to shout at me, by the end of it there was the Qual sec, the org exec sec and the org officer standing in front of me. I saw the ED walk into qual and decided to cut my losses. I dropped it
 

Feral

Rogue male
I got to the point where I could not stand being on staff any more, I was being pressured regularly to take Wednesdays and / or Thursdays off work to audit and ensure I got my 25 hours per week in the chair, the target of face to face auditing Hubbard laid out as "normal operation" for staff auditors. It was getting to the point where I would be regularly ambushed by the three top execs to do it, they would try to keep me there until I gave in, it would generally degenerate to them screaming at me about my out ethics and CI (counter intentions), and sometimes they would have the PCs scheduled already, effectively trapping me.

I told my wife I was leaving staff, she was at her limit too for other reasons and we blew together. Of course we were recovered at threat of SP declare and came in to 'route out' standardly. Three months later we were no closer to getting out of there so we stopped keeping staff hours. We'd come in if they got up to the "you will be declared stage". It was awful, we were treated like criminals. You see, Hubbard more or less explains that it is the hostile being who leaves the group, his need to leave is born out of his crimes and his impulse to protect others from himself. So it justifies any thing they may do to a "freeloader" in response to them leaving. Serving the greatest good is serving scientology itself, which is the only thing that can save man. Stands to reason.

Then one day the execs had a brilliant divide and conquer idea. I was taken by the HAS to the ethics office, some how they had gotten from my wife that she had been upset by me in an argument. The HAS asked me what my intention was, what evil purpose I had, he asked in different ways, he yelled, he threatened, no meter, no session, it was just a straight attempt to uncover my obvious criminality. I could not answer the question, it went for about 20 or 30 minutes. He was leaning over the desk in my face shouting at me. He saw I was thinking and asked what about. I said I was trying to figure out how to give him what he wanted. He told me that was my "evil enemy way" of using my auditor training and to answer the question. Another 5 minutes and I felt I would go crazy or hysterical if I did not figure out how to get this to stop. Right now, while writing this my heart is racing , hands shaking, I can again feel my desperation of that "session". Anyway, I did the only thing I could think of to end it, it was a conscious surrender to a solution that I was suppressing, I launched my self over the desk sweeping every thing on it to the floor, a coffee mug smashed against the wall.....I was going to fucking strangle him, then pound him into the ground until he stopped asking me those fucking questions, but I knew I could not take any more of that and I was going to do as much damage as I had to, just to make him stop. He stood up in shock, his eyes following the debris flying across the room I put my weight against his chest and slammed him into the adjacent wall, my right hand around his throat. All his hostile bravado was now gone, a look of terror on his face. It was an old wood panelled office with glass windows across the front so every one in HCO could see us, in the corner of my eye I saw people scurrying for cover, the whole area emptied. I cannot really remember what I said, I wish it were something really cool or scary. But I think I just said or yelled,' I don't have an evil purpose' (LOL) Seeing I had regained control or more precisely the upper hand, I then excused myself, got my wife and left.

We never went back to do the routing form. The threats of declare were left on our answering machine, I never responded. I was silently daring and even wishing them to declare us. I was convinced they were nuts. But oddly I was not done with the tech, or my bridge.
 

Feral

Rogue male
By this time I had used the study tech to word clear my tech books, I had been back into boat building for about two years. I worked on the waterfront as a subcontractor and was making good money, slowly we got out of our surplus debt and paid the freeloader bills.

It was during this period that I learned a valuable lesson in handling 'desperates'. One Thusday morning at about 4am their was a knock on the door. I got up groggy, half asleep to find two reges there on the landing, stupidly I let them in. They were in need of GI (gross income - $$$), would I pay some off my freeloader bill ? See, they were foundation staff, so Wednesday night, or in this case Thursday morning was their last chance to get their stats up for the week. After an unpleasant argument, where basically I was baited into getting upset and thus losing control of the conversation, I gave them some money, can't remember how much. I went to bed annoyed, brooding over how I'd done that. Next week..... the same thing happened at 3am ! It was clear why they came back. I told them to fuck off. They did not come back again. They always repeat the action that gets a stat. Also, I figured if you waste their time and negatively affect their stats they will avoid you... from that time on I was armed, and licensed....to be annoying.

The AO recovered us and we got an ARCX session, it worked, and we went into comm again with them, so it was straight to .....the reges. We did our OT levels to OTIV. It was while I was on AO lines that WISE started at me. This is a scientology front group that recruits businessmen and extorts money from existing scientologists. Now this guy followed me everywhere, he would be waiting for me when I went to lunch . He told me that I needed to become a wise member, I used the tech at work, didn't I ? So he said it was time to pay the piper. Wise was getting ethics in on the business world and it started with me..... paying. He wanted a fairly large percentage of my income, I forget the amount, I thought it was extortion.. I asked, "didn't I pay for the right to apply the tech I learnt ?". He berated me for being out exchange. Under the constant pressure I paid him the least I could get away with as it was implied it would move to an ethics cycle if I did not join. I was on OT III so did not want any ' trouble, see; I was overwhelmed by what I was trying to do already. An easy mark. I later found that the same principle was applied to solo nots public at flag. Often the reges would try to trap you on your first night in, while you were jet lagged, and vulnerable, and about to do a confessional. Which as all people on solo nots know can make one quite anxious. As soon as I was out of his reach I stopped paying. But this was to herald a recurring nightmare with WISE.

The whole time I was on advanced courses at the AO I was dogged by recruiters as well, those interviews can be intense, I sat through many of them, patiently and politely. One day I had come into the AO for an appointment with the qual sec. I was quarter of an hour early so made a cup of tea. Christian Foreman, a senior exec, asked if I would talk to him while I waited, "OK" I say and we go into a room, there were two missionaires, both women in there. They start recruiting me, I listen for 15 minutes then excuse myself to go to the meeting I was called for. The room had three doors. I walked to the first door a missionaire blocked it, I sat down and explained that I was now late for the meeting I had driven an hour to come in for. Their intention was clear, they were going to hold me in the office until I signed a billion year contract. I walked to the second door the other missionaire blocked that door...hmm, both were girls and when I tried to move them they fought,..... I couldn't fight a girl. I went to the third door and Christian blocked it, by now I am a bit desperate. He put his hand on me to manhandle me back in to the room, I took his wrist and inverted it, when his knees buckled I flipped him onto his back. I walked out over the top of him while he was cradling his sore hand. By the time I got to my appointment I was sure I would be declared an SP - I was terrified.... No such luck, I did not even get a KR.


Just after that an economic recession made working on luxury boats a losing proposition, by now we were back in debt heavily after our time at the AO and interest rates had more than doubled. We were in a lot of debt. With my income drying up I was worried.
 
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