Basic Scientology Survival Guide

There are a lot of disaffected Scientologists who have either decided not to continue with the Church or who have left the Church altogether. There are many people who are curious about Scientology, but are too afraid or nervous about entering a Church of Scientology based on what they have read.

Scientology can be an incredible experience for the person who knows how to navigate their way through the Church and able to handle any situations that they are confronted with there. There is an exact formula to ensure this success, which is laid out below.

Learn to say “No.” You’re going to have to be willing to say “No” a lot. If you don’t want to sign up for something you’re not interested in, don’t. If you don’t want to buy something you don’t want or need, don’t. If you don’t want to put yourself into debt, it’s very simple. Don’t.

Learn to walk away. If someone is making you uncomfortable or refusing to go away, then simply walk away. If you are being “regged” for donations, services, materials, etc. and they are not accepting a “No, I’m not interested.” answer, walk away. The more you put your foot down, the more they will be inclined to leave you alone.

You will quickly find that the people who are approached for donations and services the most are those that do not know how to say “No” and who do not know how to walk away. In Scientology, you must be in total control and not allow yourself to grant control to any staff member for any reason.

Do not trust any staff member. Just because someone is a Church staff member does not mean they are sincere and honest Scientologists. There are many staff members, both lay staff and Sea Org, who are unscrupulous and dishonest. Many members of Church staff are covertly hostile and display even suppressive tendencies. This is true of any institution or organization, whether religious or secular. Scientology organizations are no different. These people are human beings and they have human flaws. Don’t take anyone’s word for anything, and when in doubt, get into the habit of asking to see exact L. Ron Hubbard policy.

If you have any problems or grievances with any staff member, find out who their superior is and complain directly to them, or ask reception to speak to a senior staff member who will address your concerns. As a public Scientologist, you are not there to deal with the “case” (reactive mind) of an aberrated staff member and their dramatizations.

Do not trust any Scientologist. As with staff, just because someone is a Scientologist does not mean they are sincere and honest Scientologists. Scientologists are supposed to be loyal to the Church above all else. Personal loyalties and friendships mean nothing. This is not always followed, and the less tied a Scientologist is to the Church and other Scientologists, the more you will be able to trust them. Then again, the only person you will ever be able to completely trust in Scientology is yourself. The safest course of action is to keep as much distance between your “wog” (non-Scientology) life and relationships and your activities in Scientology.

Do not join staff or the Sea Org. You are begging for problems if you do this, and more people leave Scientology because of negative experiences endured while on staff than any other reason. The most successful and happy Scientologists are those who have never had the displeasure of working for the Church.

Do not associate yourself with other Scientologists. Keep yourself grounded in the non-Scientology world. If you’re interested in Scientology because you want to make friends, don’t bother. If you’re interested in Scientology because your girlfriend/boyfriend is pushing you to check it out, tell them you’re not interested. In the world of Scientology, you must maintain your autonomy. If something should happen that you decide to leave Scientology, or if you are kicked out of the Church, you will lose any and all Scientologist friends and acquaintances you have made.

Do not go into debt for the sake of Scientology. Among the greatest stupidities any Scientologist can suffer from is the stupidity of allowing themselves to go into debt for the sake of Scientology. It’s very simple. If you cannot afford to do it, don’t do it. If you need to go into debt in order to do Scientology, walk away and come back when you don’t need to go into debt. There is LRH policy specifically prohibiting any Scientologist from going into debt because of Scientology. If any registrar or anyone soliciting for donations deliberately pressures you to go into debt, complain to as many senior staff members in the Church and do so as loudly as possible, and demand that KSW be applied and demand that the guilty staff be thoroughly word cleared (using Method 9) and Chinese schooled on exact LRH policy letters concerning going into debt for the sake of Scientology.

Maintain a comfortable distance between yourself and the Church. Spend as little time at the Church as possible. Go there to study, train, or receive processing, and then go home.

Do not be afraid of any threat of Ethics. As a public Scientologist, getting sent to Ethics is meaningless. For regular public, Ethics is a voluntary action and you are not obliged to indulge them. It is only when you intend to go Clear and OT that Ethics becomes a serious issue as then they can prevent you from attesting to Clear and getting onto the OT levels if you run into Ethics problems. Then again, if you are reading this, you are not likely to ever make it that far due to the high expense and tedium of going Clear and OT and what you must endure to make it that far. The most benefit in present day Scientology is to be had at the lower end of the Bridge.

Do not ask course supervisors to explain material. Most will not help you and simply tell you the material says what it says. Many are apathetic about their job and are simply going through the motions. If you encounter a course supervisor who is motivated and willing to go out of their way to help you understand and apply the materials, stick with them and avoid at all costs any course supervisors who appear quiet, withdrawn, introverted, etc.

Be wary of anyone in Scientology who smiles constantly and unwaveringly. They are likely covertly hostile and stuck in a PTS situation. Those in Scientology who go out of their way to appear happy and jubilant are always the most covertly hostile and PTS out of anyone in the group. They are detrimental to your health and sanity.

Always keep your TRs in when dealing with any Scientologist. If you do not know what TRs (Training Routines) are, then you should be doing the Success Through Communication Course followed by the Hubbard Qualified Scientologist Course. TRs are vital to any communication cycle in life, and if you drill your TRs properly, you will be able to confront anyone in Scientology and be able to say “No” and walk away and confront their dramatizations and hysterics without flinching. The stronger your TRs, the more they will respect you, the more they will fear you, and grant you your space and beingness.

Learn and apply Keeping Scientology Working zealously. A long, long time ago, the first thing a new Scientologist would learn was a policy letter entitled Keeping Scientology Working (KSW). You would learn this policy before you did anything else in Scientology. Nowadays, you will not likely encounter this policy until you begin your first major training course in the Academy. Once you learn this policy, you will find very few people in Scientology who actually understand it, and even fewer who will bother to apply it. There is no Scientology without KSW.

KSW means acknowledging the fact that the sole scriptural authority in Scientology is the personwho developed and compiled it, L. Ron Hubbard. But more than that, KSW means recognizing that the sole spiritual authority in Scientology is you – you accept that much of Scientology that which is true for you. What you encounter in Scientology that you find is not true for you, then it is not true. It may hold true for someone else, but that is irrelevant. What matters is what is true for you.

In the Church, you will often be pressured to accept as true what you personally do not accept as true, even when you try it and experience and observe that it does not work for you. KSW means applying Scientology exactly as it laid out, and observing that it is true, or that it is not true. If a particular action you find is not true for you, then do not continue with it, and do not allow others to pressure you to continue with something that you know to not be true. Do not be afraid to apply KSW on others, most especially staff, because they will not apply it to themselves and have no qualms about imposing their out-ethics (unethical actions) and out-tech (misapplication of Scientology) on you. KSW – drill it, learn it, live it.

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There is much more that can be said. The basic point is that you are in Scientology to do what is right for you. The only reason a person will feel worse for having tried Scientology is because something is not being applied correctly. By strictly applying the above datums, you will ensure that you are minimizing all negative influences and distractions and granting yourself enough space and breathing room to allow Scientology to work the way it was intended to.

Any time you find someone in the Church of Scientology who is sincerely doing very well and flourishing and prospering, I can guarantee you it is because they are adhering to the formula laid out above. The greater the distance between yourself and the Church and other Scientologists, the greater will be your success in Scientology.

Scientology: Controversy or Cacophony?

With all the press and media attention that Scientology receives, you’d think it wouldn’t need any introduction. Nothing could be further from the truth. If what you think you know about Scientology is based on what you read on a blog, or heard on the news, you’ve probably got it all wrong.

It’s been billed as the “world’s most controversial religion,” by both the Church and its opponents. Listening to the arguments of anti-Scientology commentators, one would think there is no greater evil in the world today than the Scientology religion. There are those who would like nothing more than to tear the Church down and destroy it. The Church, for its part, uses the anti-Scientology movement as justification for aggressively pushing its parishioners to donate ever increasing sums of money, not for Church services, but for its “war chest,” a vast international fund operated by the International Association of Scientologists (IAS), used to promote the defense and advancement of the Church of Scientology.

In 2007, this aggressive fundraising campaign was launched into high gear, triggered by the release of newly edited and revised editions of L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics and Scientology books and lectures, referred to as “The Basics,” ushering in the era of the Golden Age of Knowledge that had been announced in 2005 with the release of the Congress lectures and finally completed in 2009 with the complete release of the Advanced Clinical Course lectures.

In 2008, a widespread anti-Scientology protest movement arose, seemingly out of nowhere, with the objective of dismantling the Church of Scientology in its current form, supposedly due to the Church’s attempted suppression of an IAS event video featuring Tom Cruise from 2004 that had been leaked on YouTube. The video itself seemed to be inconsequential, since there was nothing new about the Church attempting to suppress information or media it did not want the general public to view. What was interesting was that unlike previous attempted suppressions, there was nothing secret or confidential about this video. There was nothing controversial about it, or even anything that would be interesting (or understandable) to a non-Scientologist. It was just a snippet of a segment from a Scientology event where a prominent Scientologist was being honored with a special medal for his efforts in disseminating Scientology around the world.

The motivation for the leak of the video was probably an attempt to ridicule Tom Cruise and his involvement with Scientology, rather than as any kind of direct action against Scientology itself. The controversy that exploded in the media as a result, and the protest movement that came about almost immediately, triggered something that the Church had wanted for a very, very long time. For the first time in many years, the Church was put in the position of the persecuted. With the protests also followed a series of digital attacks and vandalism against the Church, and even actions against Church property. The Church labeled the perpetrators of these attacks as terrorists and anarchists, and the fact that these new enemies of the Church openly proclaimed their intention of wanting the complete destruction of Scientology in its current form, only bolstered the Church’s position.

Throughout all the noise that these alleged controversies were generating in the media, within the world of Scientology, the Church now had more than enough justification to demonstrate to its parishioners that the existence of Scientology was in fact being threatened, and that the threats they had spoken about for years were very real. Combined with the hostile actions against Scientology in Europe by the governments of France, and most especially in Germany where Scientologists are prohibited from working in the civil service and joining political parties, and where public opinion is squarely stacked against the Scientology public, the Church was able to intensify its fundraising efforts to a degree that had never been experienced by any Scientologist at any time in the history of the religion.

The nonstop barrage of attacks and protests leveled at Scientology in the following years did nothing but ensure that the media would frequently report on the Church and its activities as a matter of routine. Where in previous years media interest in Scientology waxed and waned with the times, now Scientology was virtually being talked about in various quarters of the media all the time. Scientology had finally become firmly implanted in the public consciousness, and for the first time in history, you would be hard pressed to find someone who had never heard mention of the term Scientology.

To the Church, it didn’t matter if the publicity was good or bad. Any sort of publicity would ensure that there would be more than enough people who would become curious enough to check it out for themselves. After all, how many people really trust what they read or hear in the news? If people see a motley crew of ragtag masked protesters demonstrating outside a Church of Scientology, will they take what they are claiming seriously? Would people actually begin to think that maybe Scientology is being persecuted? If so many people attack something that is not illegal, that so many people are voluntarily involved with and claim actually helps them and the world around them, then could it be that there is something to Scientology that its opponents want to prevent people from understanding?

When you turn down all that noise, you may just discover that Scientology isn’t all that controversial, after all. But then, what is it about Scientology that fascinates people, especially those who oppose it? With all the other problems in the world, why do its opponents spend so much condemning and attacking it, hoping for the day that Scientology is wiped out of existence?

On one side, there’s the Church. On the other, its opponents. In the middle, you’ll find a few extraordinary people trying to overcome ordinary problems in an ordinary world. And that’s all you’ll find.

Everything else is just noise.