10-14-2010, 12:36 PM
Zanny, thank you for sharing your story! We're such a great melting pot of experience here at Bring4th. I knew I would get some great insight- kudos to you all. 
Questioner, so far I am in agreement with your assessment of Scientology. So far here are my biggest red flags about the STS nature of the organization, based on what we've mentioned here and what I saw in the BBC documentary yesterday.
- "Us vs. Them" mentality. This is never helpful... we are One. Even if you want to just read that as we are one race of human beings on Earth. Separation is not a helpful premise to start on.
- "Attack the Attacker". Again this is more of the same 2nd density pack mentality / defense mechanism that totally bypasses the Heart chakra and closes it down fast.
- the Hundreds of Millions or Billion year long "contract". STO mentality would instead just trust that help will always be available, STS would try to control the game as much as possible.
- The required gathering of extremely private information for the purpose of insuring members don't get out of line in the future.
- The required breaking of ties with non-Scientology family members... yuck.
- Trust and faith in a single leader, whose actions can not be critiqued
- Hierarchical structure of advancement within the 'ranks'.
- The presumption that non-Scientologists are being controlled by bad guy "Theta" aliens, which need to be exorcised. This may be the most dangerous- humans have throughout history justified evil actions by claiming their opponents are not fully human.
- Payment being required of aspiring Scientologists for courses rather than information freely given.
- Celebrities being targeted for inclusion in to the "church" for better PR and of course... revenue.
- The lofty goal of "clearing the planet". It's ok to have goals, but I would worry that this is sort of a crusader mentality. No thanks.
There may be more, but those stand out the most to me. Of course on the plus side, they do seem to have a great reputation for rehabilitation as we've also discussed. In that sense, as we've all agreed, it's not entirely bad. Nothing is ever entirely bad, or entirely good. But wow, I'll be avoiding any Scientology missionaries from here out.
A secondary question is... in light of all the points I listed above, how has Scientology grown so large? Can their reputation of rehabilitation and charitable workings really outshine all those negative aspects? Then again, I suppose the same question could be asked of many, many other movements, groups, philosophies and et cetera.
L&L, Lavazza
Questioner, so far I am in agreement with your assessment of Scientology. So far here are my biggest red flags about the STS nature of the organization, based on what we've mentioned here and what I saw in the BBC documentary yesterday.
- "Us vs. Them" mentality. This is never helpful... we are One. Even if you want to just read that as we are one race of human beings on Earth. Separation is not a helpful premise to start on.
- "Attack the Attacker". Again this is more of the same 2nd density pack mentality / defense mechanism that totally bypasses the Heart chakra and closes it down fast.
- the Hundreds of Millions or Billion year long "contract". STO mentality would instead just trust that help will always be available, STS would try to control the game as much as possible.
- The required gathering of extremely private information for the purpose of insuring members don't get out of line in the future.
- The required breaking of ties with non-Scientology family members... yuck.
- Trust and faith in a single leader, whose actions can not be critiqued
- Hierarchical structure of advancement within the 'ranks'.
- The presumption that non-Scientologists are being controlled by bad guy "Theta" aliens, which need to be exorcised. This may be the most dangerous- humans have throughout history justified evil actions by claiming their opponents are not fully human.
- Payment being required of aspiring Scientologists for courses rather than information freely given.
- Celebrities being targeted for inclusion in to the "church" for better PR and of course... revenue.
- The lofty goal of "clearing the planet". It's ok to have goals, but I would worry that this is sort of a crusader mentality. No thanks.
There may be more, but those stand out the most to me. Of course on the plus side, they do seem to have a great reputation for rehabilitation as we've also discussed. In that sense, as we've all agreed, it's not entirely bad. Nothing is ever entirely bad, or entirely good. But wow, I'll be avoiding any Scientology missionaries from here out.
A secondary question is... in light of all the points I listed above, how has Scientology grown so large? Can their reputation of rehabilitation and charitable workings really outshine all those negative aspects? Then again, I suppose the same question could be asked of many, many other movements, groups, philosophies and et cetera.
L&L, Lavazza