The Scientology Thread

I don't know about Kabbalah... but my local Jewish News says that the celebrity center in Hollywood is pretty flaky.

No one got my Monkees reference? I really am a geezer.

Oh, I got it, don't you worry.

It just wasn't worth commenting on.

Well, what I thought was funny was he keeps calling himself a "believer". But now that both you and Flux have been brutally honest w/ me, I'm cancelling my stand-up tour.

Would you mind starting a thread? I'm unfamiliar with O.T.O./IOT

Ordo Templi Orientis. (As opposed to O.T.B., which stands for Off Track Betting.)

The white zone is for loading and unloading only.

This is the Central Scrutinizer...

Ahh Taoism (pronounced 'Daoism'). This is not an actual religion but a way of living by being flexible. The Book Of Changes (Yi Ching) is quite similar to Sun Tzu's Tao of flexibility in any situation. Thanks for bringing this up. This may be the only major "religion" I don't include...except I don't really count this as a true religion. It's more spiritual training rather than worship.

That's what I was thinking...time to see L Ron Hoover and the First Church of Applientology

I first encountered Landmark in 1997. The corporation I was working for had asked them to come in and initiate a project to jump start the business. Team leaders for certain divisions of the company were formed and all members and leaders of the project participated in a 3-day long seminar which mostly involved the distinctions in effective communication and ways of being at work. The company also hired a Landmark trained consultant to manage the team for the duration of the Project. Through the seminar, we were able to see how the company's culture was limiting it's growth. Because of the project, the company made remarkable gains.

There were also 'losses'. The new standards that team members were holding themselves accountable to, made some employees uncomfortable. No longer were they getting away with their unproductive passive-aggressive excuse-laden bullshit and therefore many employees quit. There was a lot of resentment and even some of those people who weren't involved with the project that stayed... would throw around the word 'cult' and 'brainwashed', really in an effort to discredit the new productivity and account for why they could continue slacking. 'Hey I'm lazy and I really don't give a fuck but at least I'm not brainwashed'.

Having seen the results of the corporate project I was curious if similar results could be achieved in my personal life. While I was relatively content at the time and considered myself 'on track' I figured what would be the harm of accelerating myself towards certain goals I wanted. After finishing the corporate project I participated in the Landmark Forum. I did so having researched extensively the history of Werner and EST and the claims of some proponents. Having seen 1st hand the way people who placed value in continuing to hold onto their patterns of unproductiveness so easily maligned those who were trying to go for more, it was my observation that most of what I read from proponents was much of the same. I took the forum which seemed mainly about distinctions of personality, or more accurately peoples habitual ways of being and the limiting behavior that arise from those ways. Metaphorically it was a big mirror, that allowed me to see certain things about the way I was being that were pretty ineffective in a few different areas in my life. As a result I cut those things out and starting achieving personal goals at the time with rapid and massive efficiency. And the quality of my relationships with my girlfriend of the time and my family, increased exponentially.

Was it worth the three long days and the $300. Absolutely.
Were there a few weirdo follower types around? Where aren't there?

Overall my experience was a positive one, however they do have a particular hard sell when it comes to taking the advanced courses. That I did not take them, of course means that the remote control implants they imbedded in my skull during the deep hypnosis session... must have been defective.




[Edited on Aug 11, 2004 by Mr_Black]

Well, it sounds to me like you may be more interested in financial gain than, spiritual, and I make no judgements on you for that.

But I will tell you about an expereience that a very good friend of mine had with the Landmarkers. He's a professional photographer who worked for a company owned by one of them for a little over two years. From the beginning, and until the end, he was asked to check out one of these seminars by his boss. The guy just couldn't accept "no" for an answer, which over time really bothered my friend. But even more than this, he realized that the owner himself was somewhat of a hack photographer who only cared about $. My friend, who has had a passion for photography since he was a kid, is only too happy to earn a good living from his art. But ultimately, what he couldn't accept about his boss was that although he talked the talk, he had no genuine interest in good photography, and put profits before quality down the line. Between the endless badgering, and the lack of pride in their product, my friend called it quits. He has since found himself another job w/ a company that is both in it it for the money, but also highly professional and serious about their craft.

That's pretty common. It often seemed as if at times there was a suggestion that you weren't really 'getting it' unless you were sharing it with other people.
Landmark culture has had a tendency for hard selling. In essence, the former partcipants become the organizations salesforce, and some of them can be quite zealous because it's suggested that they set goals as far as how many people they will 'share the forum' with and are vigorous in achieving them.

This was perhaps the one of the only aspects I found offensive with the organization and was probably the main reason I didn't take any advance courses at the time. But to be fair, with a word of warning in regards to the obnoxiousness of the 'sell it by zealot' attitude, I still would not hestitate to recommend taking a look into their programs, if a friend were looking for a resource in becoming even more effective in getting what they really want in life. I wouldn't say the same for Scientologists, who should be avoided unless you're well aware of the nature of their techniques and the end result of the processing.

"Burroughs experimented with yet another technique for going deeper into one's mental filters: Scientology. L. Ron Hubbard, creator of Scientology, was teaching that memories of events, or of words overheard while sleeping, and even of past life events were stored in a person's unconscious mental record. By bringing this information out into the open, the emotional charge on this baggage could be "cleared". What so impressed Burroughs was the effectiveness of the Scientology techniques. He once wrote that one could accomplish more with 10 hours of Scientology techniques than with 10 years of psychotherapy. He felt he accomplished a great deal of self healing through applying their methods, and for a time he was obsessed with "audits" and "E-meters".

But as he penetrated more deeply into the church he discovered that the visionary Hubbard was also an eccentric fascist and that his "church" used appallingly effective mind control techniques to assure a steady supply of loyalty, secrecy, and cash. Burroughs found it sickening and ironic that a tool effective for setting people free was being used to enslave them in other ways. He broke with Scientology and went on to blab all that he knew. (Note that a man with fewer guns might not have been so brave! Scientology had a strong policy of punishing those who broke the silence or pissed them off.) "

Anyone who cares should read Burroughs thoughts on Scientology......

New Group: Scientology