I am on a business trip right now but wanted to post this because I just got the news from home that John and I have been expelled. I will not be in regular email or usenet conversation mode, however, for at least several days if not longer.

The expulsion was on the grounds of leaving Scn publicly and connection to SPs. I don't yet have a copy of the expell/declare.

Really, as I know from having been expelled one other time and talking to so many others, what it boils down to is that no one gets expelled unless the church is angry at them. Whether the grounds for anger be real or imagined, trumped up or legitimate is another issue. But basically, piss them off enough, run afoul of some politicking, and an expell-declare is likely.

I have not publicly departed Scn. I have stated I was inactive with CofS and that it largely had much to do with certain communications I had with them. This fact.

When I first discovered this ng I thought everyone here was stark raving bonkers. Evil. Up To No Good. In great excitement I called up the Org, was connected with the DSA, Ann Ruble (nka Ann Pearce) and asked her if she knew about this terrible thing I just found on the internet. She told me it's poison, stay away from it, yadda yadda.

After a couple more months of lurking (hard to tear myself away) I started posting. Gingerly at first, then jumped in with both feet. I was quite party line in those days because I figured that what I'd always been told was true. I then saw that the ex CofS members, Free Zoners, and the more sane critics (and even some of the not so sane ones!) was true, that they weren't lying. As I mentioned before, I then decided that these were anomalies. After a time, I found that these occurrences/abuses, etc, were not anomalies and weren't rare.

But I still hung in there, hoping for reform, hoping to work within the system.

My first disappearance from the group was due to a somewhat friendly meeting with the DSA, Ann, and another executive of the Org who was a very close family friend. Ann said OSA wanted to know whose side I was on, even though I'd been posting all pro- CofS stuff. And she said she wanted me to do what was true for me. She was really nice until she called me "disingenuous" which is something people on ars like to say sometimes, too. I started wondering if it was the new word for the week! Anyway, I agreed to stop posting for my own good and Ann said if I ever wanted to know the REAL DEAL, the TRUTH, I could ask her and she'd be happy to tell me. Even then, I thought to myself "I doubt this!".

It didn't feel right to be stifled like that, so after a year or so I started to post again. This time, after just a few weeks, OSA contacted the Org again. My friend was contacted. We had a shouting match in my living room with my friend saying "JUST STAY AWAY FROM THEM!" and leaving.

I started up again after a couple weeks, and was called by my friend.

I did some fast talking and got him off my case. Told him I'd deal with OSA directly, which I did. I got an email address for someone there who's on this particular situation, and sent some emails announcing my intent to post again. I got no reply and then indicated by another email that I'd take this silence as assent.

Then I got called in to the Org for a briefing. The DSA had my friend give me all these references to read about anti social personalities and so forth. Most of you will know or know of the ones. I then handed my friend a stack of LRH references about free communication, etc.

Then I heard nothing for a couple months.

August 20, 2001, I was told to come in and have a nice meeting of the minds. It was not nice. And there was no meeting of the minds. My friend and another man, Justin Smith from HCO were there. Justin did most of the talking and had apparently been briefed as to what to say.

He brought up my civil rights and how the Org would not want to see them infringed and this was irrelevant. Religions have nothing to do with rights granted or withheld by the government of the land in which one lives unless one lives in a theocracy. This was just PR and something he'd been briefed to say, I believe. He started to get sarcastic and rude. I passed out my LRH quotes again and they fell to the floor. So I started reading them aloud. They said "This is the reference we are going by" - indicating the reference on adherence to suppressive groups.

So it ground on a bit. (or should that be "grinded"? Probably not.) No one getting anywhere. My friend was yelling,sort of like my husband when he thinks I've done something spectacularly weird. THAT kind of yelling. Justin Smith continued to be rude and snide.

They then gave me an ultimatum to decide, leave ars or get expelled. I said I'd need several days. Justin said that proved I was in "doubt"

and gave me one day. Then we talked some more, and then he said, "Well, you know, you have to call by 6:30 tonight (it was about 2 pm already). " and I said "what about the one day?" He indicated that he just now changed it. Because he could, I suppose.

It was then that I realized there was no hope. They'd continue to ask for/demand my money and time all the while treating me with contempt.

Strictness is one thing, contempt's another. I decided to walk away.

I was contacted by my friend asked to come in and get a meter check. I was not nice about it. I refused.

I waited to post for a bit, only doing some askme.com stuff as Voltaire's Child. Then I jumped back in, billing myself as inactive.

I decided that if the church views me as an ex member, that they would have to officially make that determination, that I wasn't going to just hand it to them. I then decided to stop self censoring (I'd been doing so less and less, before that, decrying the culling of pc folders, etc, but I'd still done so, a bit.) altogether.

I then started writing exactly what I thought, and knew, sometimes taking CofS sanctioned (I assume they are, anyway.) contributors to task on things.

A number of critics still saw me as a member of the group, calling it "my cult" and so on. This made no sense, but then again, this black and white thinking is just as prevalent in CofS, if not more so, as it EVER was here.

Then in late April, the church sent DSA Gwen Barnard from Portland to see me. I refused to see her without an appointment. So she had to make 2 300 mile round trips. We talked for a long time, she was very sweet. But I wasn't buying it. She offered me a job writing puff pieces on social issues for her. I nicely declined. The idea was to distract me from ARS. I told her the church should honor its creed.

We talked probably for 2 or 3 hours.

Anyway, we ended off and I heard nothing more except that I was on a list of people not to call for events, which was on HCO color flash paper (goldenrod) which is what Jana (ladayla) was referring to a couple weeks or so ago.

At that time, J &I weren't expelled, but we are now.

More later.

>
<snip hellacious story>

A long time ago, back when you were still posting the party line, before you were really listening to what was being said here, I suggested that a good way for you to discover the true nature of Scientology was to go in and question L. Ron Hubbard's writings or biography. Had you done so, you would have already experienced what you're about to encounter. Now, hopefully, they'll leave you alone. Had you never posted to ARS and just quietly left, they probably would have. Of course, had you never found ARS, you'd probably still be in. Welp, now you're declared. Had you stayed in and undergone heavy processing for years and years, you would have been deClaired, reduced to the programmed ronbots we see displayed here to our sorrow.

AAAnyways, it's time for the Official ARSCC Way to Security briefing.

Policy will not allow them to let you alone. Therefore, it will be a good idea for you and John to take some measures to cover your asses.(CYA) You've read this before, I'm sure.

Get a crosscut shredder and use it on all docs if you don't have one already.

Especially shred anything with friends' addresses on it.

Password protect all accounts if you haven't done so. Bank, utilities, what have you.

Don't leave anything in your car that you would not wish the cult to see. Not even for a second!

Get a good burglar alarm.

Inform your neighbors and ask them to keep an eye out for strange cars, lurkers, trashcan divers. If your neighborhood gets DA fliers distributed, use that as an excuse to counter with information as to what the heck is going on and why.

Don't leave your pets outdoors when you're gone.

Be leery of new associations, especially friendly ones who seem to have an unnatural desire to know you better and be your best friend.

Keep in mind that at any given time, you are being watched and conduct yourself accordingly. It's a pain in the butt, true. But you may get to like it.

Beware of strange plants that appear in your garden overnight.

In a way, I'm sorry this happened to you, but it was inevitable. The cult isn't about freedom, self improvement, or high sounding ideals.

It's about money. They say that stuff to suck good, well-meaning people into their maw. That's why they expelled you, in part. You bought into the idealistic claptrap they dished up, and the last thing they really want is honest, forthright people cluttering up the place.

I wish you and John all the best. Watch your backs.
--
Barb
Chaplain, ARSCC
http://members.home.net/bwarr1/index.htm
SHOULD THE GOVERNMENT INVESTIGATE $CIENTOLOGY? Sign the petition at
http://www4.PetitionOnline.com/cofs1/
"Every week, every month, every year, every decade and now every century, Scientology does weird and stupid things to damage its own reputation."

-Steve Zadarnowski "Comparing Scientology to a motorcycle gang is a gross, unpardonable insult to bikers everywhere. Even at our worst, we are never as bad as Scientology."

-ex-member, Thunderclouds motorcycle "club"

"$cientology sees the world this way: One man with a picket sign:

terrorism. Five thousand people dead in a deliberate inferno: business opportunity.

$cientology oozes _under_ terrorists to hide."

-Chris Leithiser

Friends have called me and related a number of the responses to my post made earlier today about the expell/declare.

I appreciate the kind words.

I can't pull that thread up yet through Google, so I'm just making this a separate post.

In answer to the question (posed by, I think, Shark) as to whether I plan to do my A-E steps. Absolutely not. I have been facing the fact that this would probably eventually happen and have planned out some things. One thing is that I am not interested in applying for reentry to CofS. Were the abuses anomalies, and had they treated me only with strictness but no contempt- I'd view this differently. But these elements are just not there. And therein lies the rub. Were they just strict/fundamentalist type thing, there'd be far less to criticize.

And someone like me would stick around, hoping to change their minds about things. And there'd actually be some hope. But I've noticed- even when I was pretty convinced that they were the only game in town, metaphysically speaking, again and again- that the church makes more and more demands on its members while at the same time delivering less and less in return and while treating people in a contemptuous manner.

The latter feeds the former, anyway, doesn't it.

Were it not for the contempt, some of the most highly outspoken critics who also were once CofS members, would not even be critics.

But the contempt was there and the critics knew this and know that now. Others who've never been members have seen this, as well.

I have seen it, too. I remember once a long time ago after being told in a D of P interview that I had no right to ever question anything an SO member ever did or said to me because they work so hard and everything, becoming very upset that the only people who had the information and metaphysical approach that I wanted was CofS. And that was LONG before I ever started posting here. Members are conditioned to believe that they can never get this particular metaphysical approach, body of tech, whatever you want to call it- anywhere else.

This is not true.

And even if it was, I see it that the church is playing the "you'll lose salvation" card. Well, that's blackmail of a sort. Blackmail and idealism do not go well together, to put it mildly.

I don't need this blackmail. I don't want it. I do not believe for one minute that anybody's going to go into a dwindling spiral onward to an eternity of blackness and pain just because they may lose access or cut access to this metaphysical approach.

Many of you are skeptics- you think this stuff's for the birds anyway.

Well, as it happens, I do not think all of it is, although I've observed before and will again that Hubbard inculcated much of his own fixed ideas, prejudices, paranoia and other unsavory stuff into Scn and that this was irresponsible of him, to say the least. But even though I find much use for many of the ideas in Scn, I do not think for one minute that someone isn't better off being cut off from emotional blackmail and contempt and people who do not practice what they preach than to just go off and do something different, and to live life in a manner in which he chose.

Scn is mystical in origin in some respects. The idea that one can deteriorate spiritually is very much extant in mysticism and in Scn.

Well, fine, so one can. But it does not always mean that one WILL deteriorate as soon as he stops doing a particular thing or even if he, for a time, stops doing anything on the metaphysical/philosophical front. One can be involved in spiritual activities and be very irresponsible and harmful to others and oneself. And one can be involved in mundane, "MEST" centered, every day activities and be leading a very fine life with no resulting detriment to his or her soul or spirituality or mental frame of mind or anything else.

I think much of Scn is just fine. I like that path. I pick and choose as to how I want to walk that path. So be it.

But I tell you now that I'd rather be off that path completely than to stick around for any emotional blackmail, fair game thingies or whatnot. (fortunately I don't have to. The ideas I like still exist, in or out of the church.)

These things, while done under the aegis and auspices of a group that supposedly fosters spirituality just compromise the ideology that the group purports to espouse.

Huh!! One would be better off being a janitor during the day, and doing sports, and barhopping in one's free time- IOW, one can be involved in some pretty mundane and ordinary stuff and still, as long as one does not compromise himself, find himself being chipped at day by day, have his wishes, thoughts and "determinism" overridden all the time- be much better off than to give his all to a group that wishes to give little or nothing in return.

Scn centers find more and more excuses to not deliver auditing.

Auditing's supposed to be THEIR deal. Their main thing. One doesn't get what one came for, then.

I repeat something I said once before: There was once a novel called "I love the person you were meant to be". Well, that's mawkish but it's more or less how I feel. I love the vision of Scn that Hubbard seems to have had, especially earlier on than later. I do not love the way the church and individual Scn'ists (some of them) treat their members, their ex members and critics and others with whom they concern themselves. I do not love the fact that Hubbard fostered these ideas. Anyone reading the PR series will know what I mean.

Another thought- I thought that I'd ditched all self-censoring maybe about a year or 10 months ago. I now think that this might have only been MOSTLY true.

I think I may be, therefore, even more outspoken in the future about things that the church says and does and what Hubbard did and said, too.

I will still demur and continue to be a devil's advocate of sorts (is that an unfortunate choice of words? Probably) if I think I see some generalizations here about Scn'ists. But then again, a.r.s. wouldn't be a.r.s. without me coming in every now and again and being argumentative, now would it.

I'll end this post with another thought: any religion or methodology which prefers dishonesty, the stifling of candid express of thought over telling the truth - even when the truth is mighty embarrassing has some MAJOR housecleaning to do.

And since the thought is father to the deed, then the first thing to get cleane d up would have to be some ideas that fostered these embarrassing things they don't want people discussing. This would include some of Hubbard's policies and of course, directives and projects put forth by post-LRH management.

Talk to ya later.

Claire Swazey Ornery Do-It-Yourself Scientologist

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