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Anyways, the other subject you brought up (WHY? WHY? WHY? DID I GET SUCKED INTO A FREAKISHLY STUPID CULT?) is an endlessly fascinating one. I think there are many answers to it.
I became a human canary, too.Being impatient, I didn't want to let many other canaries fly into the cave to see if they returned. Thus, I became a human canary, but still made it back out, as you and our friends here did.
That imprints on small children. Well, eighteen
Better and better as I've aged, if I'm candid.
Like I have been trying to say as Gib, you fell for Hubbard's rhetoric, the art of persuasion, just like I did and everybody else.I became a human canary, too.
I'll tell a bit of my story of how and why, if anyone is interested. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Prologue
Was raised in a family with not much love, if any. Parents' conversations were daily
bouts of horrendous arguing at 100 decibels from the time I was a toddler. Some
of the arguments I heard at the age of five were about the paternity of my siblings.
I guess something was going on.That imprints on small children. Well, eighteen
years of that without relent.
By the time I was in college, I suffered from a dark, dreary cloud over my head at all
times. I guess looking back I could describe it as college-aged, adolescent, mild depression.
Not uncommon at that age, but plenty dreary with no answers anywhere near and no
end in sight.
Sheer desperation could describe me. Not uncommon at that age and in those times. Just
compare to college kids today. They have a different set of problems just as severe in
their own ways. It's just a f*cked up transition age for many people for a few years.
The story I haven't told
I was at a friend's house and saw a Hubbard book on the coffee table. This person was
casually looking into the subject. I was immediately drawn in by the marketing copy on
the dust jacket. Just fascinating.
I was too cautious to go into the small-town mission nearby, thinking some of the fantastical
claims were too good to be true. So here's what I did. I somehow bought about five or six books
and read through them here and there, enough to try out auditing . . . but not on me! Not yet.
In one of the books, Hubbard said that any person of moderate to high intelligence could
run these processes out of the book as written and that there was very little risk of harm.
I talked three people I knew into being my experimental raw meat preclears and audited
them. One achieved and voiced what I thought were fantastic results. A second achieved
very good results. (She's an OT8, Class 6 today, AFAIK, and still in.) The third was just
OK, as I recall.
None of my preclears had read any of the books or were trained in any way. They
were simply doing what I was telling them. One of my preclears had voiced that he was
exterior from his body and could see things while outside. I knew I wanted to achieve
these fantastical results.
So I found a fourth raw guinea pig and arranged to do a co-audit, back and forth. Neither
of us had been inside a mission as yet. Just book auditors on the outside. Read it, do it.
Our results, just OK. But I was curious and had high hopes for the subject from the auditing
I'd done on others and what I'd gotten. Only after all that, I'd walked into the local mission
and began auditor courses. As you know, it's all a downhill toboggan slide once you do that.
And a guaranteed high-speed toboggan crash eventually, way down the line.![]()
I did try to do a proper "due diligence" before getting involved, but finding out stuff pre-Internet
was pretty difficult where I lived. Obviously the results I saw in the people I was auditing in the
field over-road the skepticism and hesitations I had at the time. *
Should I, could I have done more due diligence?
I lived in a smaller town and couldn't find much if anything at all in my local libraries. Certainly
not issues of Life from 1968, critical books or even Hubbard's books. Believe me, I had looked.
None of this stuff was readily available then. Not in flyover country.
Wasn't it obvious it was a cult? Not necessarily so by going in a mission. They were a lot more
tame and friendly and could be more set up to appear simply like professional services offices
of a mental counselor/ practitioner. Once you got to an org, then especially to Flag, the cult
look and feel is overpowering. But by then it's usually too late. At least it was for me obviously.
How about after Hubbard's death?
I remember going to the library and searching out microfiche of newspapers from other cities
to find out what the heck was going on around the time of Hubbard's death and in the years
following. I lived far away from the nucleus of Scientology action and had almost no Sci friends
I could call. I was a practicing "fabian," one who avoids direct confrontations, LOL. Instead, I was
keeping my powder dry and seeing what would happen during those post-Hubbard years.
I wish we'd have had the Internet back then. I'd have saved myself a lot of money and grief.
How am I now?
Happy as a clam now and most of my life, LOL.Better and better as I've aged, if I'm candid.
Had a modicum of success and learned some small professional skills along the way. Escaped
"the cave" in one piece, I guess, around the time of GAT I. That was enough.
Summary
I was desperate, chronically down at the time and drifting aimlessly with no good path forward
for my life. (Not uncommon for the early 20's.) Hubbard provided hope and a form of magical thinking
and escape that was irresistible at the time, if it worked as advertised. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
*Disclaimer: Just to be clear for any newbies coming to the message board, I wouldn't recommend
getting involved nowadays.It was definitely different "back in the day." And that chronic adolescent![]()
"depression thing" went away pretty quickly for one reason or another, too.
yah, that was Hubbard's rhetoric, but underneath it all was his ethics system of ethos, namely are your stats up, if not, you are out ethics.
the actual scale goes something like this..
![]()
.
Whenever I see anything written by him I just keep going. Maybe those funny pranksters from the religion '$cientology Sucks' can create a sign that says 'Alanzo Sucks'. Can a person belong to two 'suck' religions? Hold on, maybe they can because El Con cultists freely state that a person can belong to more than one religion that suck, for example, $cientology and Islam. The world would be better off without both of them.I will tell you something that is more spooky than LRHs teeth.
Alanzos blog.
Like I have been trying to say as Gib, you fell for Hubbard's rhetoric, the art of persuasion, just like I did and everybody else.
Since a new audience will probably come around and read these posts one day,In one of the books, Hubbard said that any person of moderate to high intelligence could
run these processes out of the book as written and that there was very little risk of harm.
I talked three people I knew into being my experimental raw meat preclears and audited
them. One achieved and voiced what I thought were fantastic results. A second achieved
very good results. (She's an OT8, Class 6 today, AFAIK, and still in.) The third was just
OK, as I recall.
None of my preclears had read any of the books or were trained in any way. They
were simply doing what I was telling them. One of my preclears had voiced that he was
exterior from his body and could see things while outside. I knew I wanted to achieve
these fantastical results.

I spent 7 years in the SO living by this maxim: "Trust, but verify". This was immediately followed by another great quote: "Speak softly, but carry a big stick."
.
yep, the dean wilbur tread, and others.You be Gib from ESMB?
Here's what is amazing, back when I read DMSMH, in 1986, thanks to Jefferson Hawkins marketing campaign. When I went into the org for a free dianetics auditing session, I assumed all staff members were "clear" and or "OT"..
Whilst I was a pre-clear, I often was given briefings and r-factors from very wise upper echelon staff members on how to best stay out of ethics trouble and achieve the state of Ideal OT Scientologist.
They advised a similar policy: "Speak softly but carry a big tech estimate."
.
.