The Scientology life — and Scientology death — of Romey Beliles

[Karen#1]

TONY ORTEGA
Excerpt:

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[Romey, 2022]

1. Owensboro

Romey Lance Beliles wanted you to know two things about him. First, that he was from Owensboro, Kentucky where his high school had voted him “most friendly” in the class of 1990. And second, that he owned at least one weightlifting record which still stood, years after he had played football for the Owensboro Red Devils.

He stood 5 feet 10 and worked hard in the weight room his senior year, besting several records. The fact that one of those marks still stood decades later was one of Romey’s proudest achievements and said something about his grit and determination, he thought.

He was from a deeply Christian family living in America’s Bible Belt. Everyone he knew growing up was an evangelical Christian, he noted at one point, except for three Jewish guys. His father was a barber, whose father had been a barber before him. His mother had been a homemaker, and they had split up and remarried by the time Romey was in high school. Romey had three step-siblings and a cousin he was particularly close to, named Shane.

And Romey had a maternal grandmother, the matriarch of the family, who spoke in tongues when the spirit moved her. He mentioned it occasionally, as if it summed up who he was and where he was from: He was a nice guy from Kentucky in a deeply Christian part of the country, his grandmother spoke in tongues, he had set weightlifting records at Owensboro High School, he was good looking and had an easy charm, and girls were drawn to him.

As high school graduation neared, Romey knew his options were pretty well defined. There was a strong pull to follow his father into the hair-cutting business. He had been around it his entire life and could make a steady, if modest, living at it.

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The Scientology life — and Scientology death — of Romey Beliles

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[I M Dex]

Romey's story really touches me. He was such a good, capable, resourceful helpful and caring person. My impression is that he was so traumatized by his high school girlfriend's betrayal that he clamped hard onto "going clear" and Scientology as what he must do, a total obsession, that this and only this would free him from his pain, so absolutely that everything else only existed in relation to ultimately finding the way to that projected relief. It provides for a new perspective on the Dianetics book, that it could be considered to be one long and thorough indoctrination into absolute investment, in fact submission in and to Hubbard and his paradigm, to the exclusion of anything that got in the way. As in "the purpose of ethics is to remove counter-intention from the environment, and having accomplished that, removing all other-intention".