Unsalvageable.

I am coming to the opinion that the Church of Scientology is unsalvageable.

Not that it was not a noble and well intended effort, and still to this day mostly populated by caring, aware and valuable people....

Its just that its direction has changed and the people who are in it are so interiorized that they are not seeing where they are going.

When I first tested the waters of organized scientology, I was shown LRH references that said it was my responsibility to examine what he said and determine for myself the truth or falsehood of it.

This is no longer the way it works. Challenging the status quo in the church results in banishment. Suppressive Person declares are issued for folks with years of service, and records of accomplishment. I was just talking today with someone about Trey Lotz, a class VIII, OT VIII who had done 2 of his 3 flag internships directly under LRH, and who has over 40,000 hours of delivery of auditing to his credit. How can this person be someone whom the church needs to banish?

Most all of the old timers from the days when LRH was at Saint Hill are declared, the top auditors in scientology, the Class 12's are down to a few.....how can these people all be suppressive?

LRH set up the organization of scientology so that the top of the organization was an exterior qual function to the activities below it, yet today it has been turned upside down so that it is management by orders from the top with no initiative allowed at the bottom. A model best suited for war. War is bad.

The basic paradigm of scientology is the unmocking of stuck dichotomies. War being of that kind. But numerous examples of created arbitrary dichotomies can be seen in the current church. The push for material status with opulent buildings as opposed to the stated goal of scientology; freeing spiritual beings from the material! We are not mud, scientology is not buildings.

And if we aspire to be free beings, how does the rigid cultural pressure in the church fit? It is not complimentary to spiritual freedom but in fixed opposition.

What is sad is the that people are not seeing the larger direction of the church in the more minor roles they play in it. There are so many cultural elements in scientology that have carried through the years to now be used to manipulate and entrap its members.....and the membership is now of a generation that may only know this more rigid, dogmatic "religion" rather than what it once was. A great deal of institutional memory was lost in Miscaviges putsch in the early 80's....

I am still in good standing with the church, mainly because "they" do not know what I have said, and don't seem to have people who can pull withholds. I have been on the meter a few times and had my "inappropriate thoughts" remain unaddressed....Yes I can think nice thoughts and float my needle even when asked specifically for overts. ( I won't get into that whole floating needle mess...... but its another example of scientology turned upside down, and its acceptance is one more example of the membership not applying what LRH wrote, but Acquiescing to cultural pressure).

It is the culture that is the problem...

Culture:

• An integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behavior that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning
• The set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization or group

I am a scientologist, and don't see that changing till I die. I am a bit frustrated that I can not influence the organization set up by the philosophies founder, to retake and keep the form he envisioned. Scientology is not the Church that owns the name. The church is not the important thing, although it acts as if it were. The ideas are the value.

I have a recently arrived theory, LRH had most of the OT concepts and techniques figured out in the 50's, and then spent decades undercutting and expounding on them to make it available to people who needed a bit more explanation and structure.....my theory is that the organization underwent a similar dumbing down, bringing it to the level where the likes of its current leadership could move in. The mistake being not maintaining an exterior viewpoint on it all. LRH interiorized into his own creation. Like all of us have. We see it every time we look at some bit of "case", our own cause, unacknowledged, unrecognized, and thus putting us at effect.

So what is the solution? For me it is not to once again set myself up in opposition, and dedicate myself to the latest GPM.....It is to use what I know, based on my own decision that it is true and no one elses, to function, to create the future, and to enjoy the experience of it.

I am not bound to scientology by policy, or culture, but only by my own observation of its value to me. And I will also observe other portions of life and find value or not on my own determinism.

I have a few favorites...

http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthread.php?t=11184  (I know I keep pushing these....  :)  )

But most importantly is the recognition that even though I like some school of thought or a few, it is fundamentally only my responsibility for what happens in my life, and in what I observe. I create in some fashion all that I perceive. Understanding how to operate based on this truth, is what I now need to learn.

My love to any who read this. Love is the core of life.