Yeah welcome to the board.
Now one thing I think you could do that would be very popular here is to give us a bit of an inside view of what is happening inside Scientology.
Sometimes I think the glossy mail outs aren`t being completely honest.
Is it true, for instance, that Scientology is exploding ?
Can you give any idea of the tone level inside Flag ?
Is there a general opinion about Miscavige`s stewardship of Scientology ?
If you want to give gory, explicit details that would be fine.
What are Scientologists being told about all the entheta appearing in the media ?
What are Scios being told about the Supa powa building ?
Just any inside scoop stuff.
Gory details are okay.
Whew! lotta questions...
First, yes it is exploding, but in the 'disaster A-bomb' kind of explosion. I was at Flag 2 years ago and it was busy - but they were stealing business from the Orgs by promoting their grades as faster.
The tone level is a little trickier to explain. There is a fake enthusiasm on the surface, mostly for the benefit of the public, but overall I would have to say the tone level of the OOTs and SO was fear. There was a tremendous amount of pressure to raise money for the IAS and a push to get people to buy the basics and get started on course or on extension courses. There was also a lot of push to recover old Scientologists to get them on the Basics. (Of course, at the time I didn't know there had been a previous release in the 90's.) I had worked on those lines (a WQSB that all OOTs and SO had to do) and several times didn't get any sleep because I didn't meet my quota, and I wasn't the only one. We even donated our personal income to the IAS to pay for a legal response to the Mother Act (I think that was what it was called) even though we were earning peanuts on staff. To refuse made us look uncommitted and "CI". If you weren't in fear of not making your quota (or checksheet time) it was because you were using anger to get others to meet their quotas.
Miscavige is worshipped. The party line is that he is personally responsible for having tracked down missing data for the Basics etc. and until he came along Scientology was filled with SP's, but now things are on track, as Ron instructed him to do. When CI is spoken of its not with the thought of going against Ron's intention, but against DM's. I still find it ironic that CI is the abbreviation for both Command Intention and Counter Intention - in the reality of action, I don't see the difference.
We are protected from the entheta - I had no idea there was so much out there. Coming from South Africa I can tell you Scientology is still mostly unknown by the general public, so there was very little to have to handle, but it was different at Flag. We are sometimes told that the reason all the attacks are happening now is because the SP's feel threatened by our success. We are definitely discouraged from looking on the internet, and Sec-check threats are a good way of keeping us too scared to look. Personally, I never got onto the internet at all until Nov last year - instead of it being the ultimate comm line, I was led to believe it was just poison and a source of enturbulation (as are all papers, magazines etc.)
The SuperPower building is practically ready, all that has to happen is to man it. There is a strong push to join the Sea Org - public and even Org staff are pushed to do the right thing. It is praised as the only thing to do... There is also a lot of chat about the machines Ron designed, that have finally been built, and as soon as the staff are recruited and in place, there will be a dramatic change for all of us. Of course those who donated the most will get first crack, then the SO, then staff.
I hope this covers your questions. There is so much to talk about, which is why I haven't written my story yet - it would take awhile...