cathleen's place: $cientology

I read an article about lawsuits against Wal-Mart (or is it WalMart, I can't remember and am too lazy to look it up and they keep changing it). It looks like the company could face over $2 billion in fines. Yowza! I hate WalMart. I feel like I lose about 100 IQ points just walking in the door, not to mention feeling guilty for being willing to purchase anything that they sell.

The article is by Inspired Protagonist over at Seventh Generation. Here's part of the article:

Altogether, Wal-Mart faces more than 70 lawsuits, filed throughout the country, in which employees have accused the company of making them work off the clock or miss required breaks. Cheating people who make so little is pretty unconscionable. But to learn that the practice was part of a national strategy, well, that’s a sad statement on big business.

Now, here's the part that I thought was sort of funny: In the comments section, there are WalMart apologists! Yes! It's so weird to me that people would go to an article in the Seventh Generation Newsletter and write nice things about WalMart, or worse, criticize people who are damning WalMart. It's sort of funny because it reminds me of $cientology trolls who make a habit of flaming all over stories/articles/comment sections that are critical of $cientology. But not exactly funny because it's disgusting.

I'm just saying.

This is the best Anonymous video so far. Nothing shows how much fun they are having like this great piece. It's 4 1/2 minutes of pure pleasure.

Your Mission: Spy vs Sci from LRonHu88ard on Vimeo.

Join us on July 12 for Spy vs. Sci. It's a very fun way to change the world.

What's this? you ask. Well, it's a fabulous idea dreamt up by these two lovelies. And I'm very honored to be one of the inaugural speakers.

Yes, I am going to tell a $cientology story -- all about escaping from the evil cult's clutches...the first time.

You are all invited, please bring family and friends. The other storytellers are amazing.

(Click on that bad boy on the left so it gets big enough to read.)

I'd like to invite anyone who's been sitting on the sidelines and thinking how great it is that someone else is taking on the cult of $cientology to jump right in (with both feet) on June 14th. You are most welcome.

We are Anonymous. We are legion. Expect us.

Join the Sea Arrrgh, make yer mark and fly the colors -- June 14 protest of the Cult of Scientology. from TheDonzerlyLight on Vimeo.

I'm a little bit behind the curve here -- I just now found out that today is a Bloggers Unite day and the topic is Human Rights. There are plenty of excellent posts on excellent blogs.

I have a pretty limited view. I don't read the papers or listen to TV/radio news. I'm woefully uninformed. It's a bad habit that comes from being afraid to know about all the pain in this world. I don't like admitting it, but it's true. I can't see what I can do to help.

So, what I know personally about Human Rights abuses has to do with the Church of $cientology and their horrible treatment of Sea Org members. I experienced a tiny bit of this treatment in 1969: I was locked in a basement because I said I wanted to go home. I was 3 months pregnant and was not getting enough sleep or good nutrition. I just wanted to go home and take good care of myself and my baby. That made me an enemy of theirs and that's what they do with enemies -- they lock them up. (Or they declare them Suppressive Persons and then sic the dogs on them.) I eventually talked my way out of the basement and out of the office and into my sister's car. She drove me home. The "church" began calling the next day -- I should come back immediately, they'll take good care of me, etc., etc. And this is a mild story. It's fairly unbelievable what they are doing at this very moment and in this country. They have forced labor prison camps in Hemet and Los Angeles, California and in Clearwater, Florida. They force young women to get abortions or face losing "everything." Most Sea Org members work about 126 hours a week for $25 - $30 dollars/week (if that). They live on rice and beans for months at a time. They are physically, mentally and spiritually abused day in and day out. And they are told that if they leave, they will starve and be bums on the street.

Here are a few places you can go if you want to inform yourself about this evil cult and it's Human Rights abuses:

Counterfeit Dreams
Ex-Scientology Kids
Exposing the Con
Scientology Disconnection
Why I Left Scientology
Ask the Scientologist

And there are things you can do. Find out about the next Anonymous protest and maybe participate: Enturbulation.org -- A Source for Information on Activism Against the Scientology Organization.

I've been to all the Anonymous protests so far and they are great. These people are courageous, fun, funny and very committed to making the evil cult known as $cientology crumble.

Rock on Anonymous!

I guess it makes sense that as we're about to leave Florida forever that I would think of things that I like about it. I'm also thinking of reasons to be glad we came here. I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that moving to Florida was a good thing, but good things have come out of being here:

We completely and totally removed ourselves from $cientology, not as a result of moving here, but nevertheless, while we were here. And I think it helped being here when the decision was made. This is, after all, the "mecca of the Church of $cientology." That made it much easier to witness the wrongness of this "church."

We learned a great deal about home renovation, building trades, permits (or not), building codes and how to ensure that people doing work for you do it right. We have lots of new skills and we've picked up some really nice tools (yes, we could have acquired them anywhere, but oh well).

We met Stephanie. And, believe me, Stephanie has pretty much saved my life. I won't bore you with the gruesome stories of all the injuries I've had, but suffice it to say, I was in some pain. That pain is gone and I feel better than I have for many years.

We learned to laugh again.

We went to the Kennedy Space Center.

I got to live in another place (like San Diego) that has beautiful flowers all year 'round.

Did you ever have somebody bring up something mean or stupid that you did years earlier? How did that make you feel? Certainly you didn’t intend to do harm…well, okay, maybe you did once. But let’s all just admit that we’ve made some mistakes, yeah? That seems like a good place to start.

In the last six months I’ve been reminded by 4 people of things I did years ago that were hurtful to them.

In one case, the event was 42 years ago. I will admit that what happened was pretty bad and that the injured party really suffered. I do understand. I truly fucked up.

Number two was a chatty letter I got from a relative. He recounted, between innocuous personal stories, some genuinely awful things I did or said to him during a visit he made to our house. That visit would have been, umm, let’s see, about 10 years ago. And, again, he was right – I had been very thoughtless and cruel.

The third reminder was in an email from one of my new “old” friends. I guess I was rude to her too. Apparently, in my youth, I had cussed her out. In this case I can’t say that I actually remember what happened. I recall being mostly a wuss at that age and not the sort of person who would go off on someone. I didn’t have that kind of bravado, in my recollection of myself at 17.

And last, but not least, a recent email reminding me of an insensitivity 5 years ago. That was someone I snubbed because they made some remark about $cientology. And you probably thought I was exaggerating about dumping people who didn’t like my “church?” Nope, did it all the time. But in this particular case, I probably would have snubbed that person anyway. He was hard for me to get along with, I didn’t have anything in common with him and he’d moved far away. It’s this damn blog. I’m so easily found. I should have left well enough alone. I could have ignored his email, but nooo, I’m trained to be polite.

Which brings us to one of the points of all this: How to handle other people’s upsets when they’re old news. I have no problem with apologizing and I certainly have been doing a lot of that lately. That’s completely fine with me. And I’m not glib about it, I feel their pain, I hear that I’ve done damage. I sincerely wish I could take it back, have an undo or a do-over, or something so that that thing never happened to them. But I can’t.

Here would be another point of this rant: What is their reason for telling me about it now? Have they been waiting all this time for that apology? Is there more I should do to make up for my screw-ups? Now, see, I feel pretty strongly that holding onto old hurts is counter-productive – I can’t think of a way that it would help a person, can you? To me it comes under the heading of “get over it.” I was trying to think of things that family or friends had done to me that had upset me, hurt me, pissed me off, etc. I was able to remember a few things, but nothing so huge that I thought I should bring it up in the now. Nothing. Maybe this is one of the important variables here: how big was the hurtful thing? Wouldn't that have something to do with whether or not you held onto it? And for how long?

I have to say here that I know this is a complicated issue. I think “getting over it” and “moving on” are very important. I believe that holding onto old hurts just makes a person sour, unhappy, a sad sack and someone who cannot trust others. That said, here’s a story about my own experience on the other side: I was an abused child, from age 5 to age 12. The abuse was at the hands of my father, who died when I was 12. I tried once, when I was in my early 20s, to talk to my mother about what had happened. I really had to work up my courage to have that conversation, trust me. So I carefully brought up the past, carefully said something about feeling damaged by what had happened, carefully, walking on eggshells here, tried to engage my mother in the conversation. She had two responses, neither of them an apology. The first was, “It happens to all little girls,” and the second was, “Can’t you just move on?!”

An apology at that moment would have helped me move on, would have helped me heal. An apology would have said to me that she knew she was partly accountable and that she didn't take it lightly. It certainly would have been a step in the right direction. I can see how that apology, even decades after the fact, is crucial.

Unless, of course, it's something little. Then, if someone's hanging on, waiting for you to grovel and whip yourself, it's a whole different story. Then it's their problem, I think.

All of this raises many questions for me: What about the moment the hurt occurs? Isn't that the best time of all to say, "Hey, asshole, get off my foot!"? But maybe you, like me, aren't the brave sort of person you would like to be. I may be able to rant, especially here, where I have lots of time to write and rewrite. That's not the same as having the guts to tell someone that I feel hurt. And how about this: Do you always know that you've been hurt, right at the moment it happens? I have a delay thing -- it may take a while for me to catch up, so to speak. I may not know for a week that I should have stood up for myself. And if I had known right at the moment, would I have been up to the task?

It is a complex thing, human nature. There's all the stuff we're taught about "please" and "thank you" and being polite. There's all the stuff about being female and not feeling entitled to throw a punch occasionally. There's all the stuff about being male and not allowing your feelings to show, or, for that matter, to be known to yourself.

I believe we must have conversations with ourselves about these things. And somehow, we have to find our own balance, what are the lines that we will not cross and that we will not allow others to cross with us. And once we've figured that out, how do we communicate those things to others? If someone is standing on your toe, is smacking them upside the head the first thing you would do? I know people who are so angry most of the time, that that is what they would do. But if you've "moved on" from the hurts in your life, wouldn't you be more inclined to say, "Excuse me, would you please get off my toe?"

We moved into a house, here in Florida, that badly needed renovation. We gutted almost every room in this house and started over, ceiling to floor. We did an incredible job and now this house is gorgeous. As I've said many times before (and of course you're really tired of hearing it), we moved here to do bigger and better things in our "church." So, naturally, our first contacts were other $cientologists. Kim and I needed massive numbers of recommendations for people to help us with contracting, electrical, masonry, plumbing, etc. We had so much work to do and we only trusted $cnists to tell us who to hire. Interestingly, some of the recommendations were for non-$cientologist tradesmen. Okay. We'll take a chance. We'll try them.

To be perfectly honest, some of the worst work was done by $cnists and some of the most irresponsible tradesmen were $cnists. One electrician (who was a $cnist) started the work we contracted for and then disappeared without a trace for about 2 months. Then he just showed up one day and asked if we were too mad at him to have him finish the work. Right. That's a good way to do business.

Of all the people we met through this process, the most marvelous one is Eddie. He is a first-rate plumber and a glorious human being. He's in his 70s and can still do the work of a much younger man. Yes, he is slowing down now. We called him this week to take care of a few things that came up on the inspection and he said he couldn't crawl under the house. He also wasn't going to let me pay him for the two things he did fix because of our long term relationship. Eddie told us a few stories of his dealings with $cnists -- they weren't happy stories.

I cried when Eddie left the other day. I know I won't see him again. Even though we weren't "friends," I feel a loss and I will miss him.

To answer that question, I must explain how we came to be here in the first place. Since Clearwater, Florida is definitely not a place we would have chosen to live, what in the world would make us move here? Well, brainwashing is the simplest answer. We were "good" members of $cientology and we did what was expected of us -- and we didn't think about it. We sold our house in San Diego and moved to Florida. We didn't like it much at first and we hoped that it would get better. It didn't.

Here's what we didn't like:
The heat.
The humidity.
The bugs.
The mold and mildew.
The humidity combined with the heat.
The rats.
The really stupid people.
The ugliness of the town of Clearwater.
The deadness of the town.
The humidity.
There are no freeways.
There's nothing pretty or beautiful to look at (okay, there must be something.)

Once we woke up and knew that we were not $cientologists any more, all that was left was selling this house and getting out of here. The waking up was in the summer of 2006; the selling of the house was last week.

So, of course, one of the reasons we want to leave is that Clearwater is buried in $cientology. The biggest of their organizations is here and attracts people from all over the world. They've bought and renovated several of the historical buildings in Clearwater. And of course, there's the Super Power Building, which they've been working on for ten years. They hit up $cientologists for the money to build this monstrosity to the tune of $142 million. The building is not finished and the thing that it was built for isn't finished and the city of Clearwater has been fining them for being so overdue on finishing, but they don't care. They can't finish the building because they have nothing and no one to put in it.

There are also many businesses owned by $cientologists -- I worked for one until we were declared "suppressive persons," at which time I was fired. Our tax preparer was a $cieno and now she won't do our taxes. The contractor who did all the major projects on our house is a $cieno. I ran into him at the market, he wouldn't look at me. The $cieno friends we had likewise won't acknowledge that they know us. They are very weird.

$cientology casts a pall over this part of Florida. Clearwater is a dying town and many long-time residents believe it is directly because of the presence of $cientology. You can look up all the awful things this "church" did when they arrived here. Just Google Gabe Cazeres.

But the really good news is $cientology itself is dying. There have been outspoken critics for years and they've chipped away at the cult while being targets of harassment and worse. Now comes Anonymous. I'm so happy they're here. They're like the calvary arriving in the old westerns. They've put together an excellent video. It's only 14 minutes but will show you why they're involved. We didn't join in the protest on February 10, but we will tomorrow.

We haven't enjoyed living in Florida, and it's possible that we came here just so we could wake up from our nightmare. We are so happy to be out of the cult of greed and power. We are so happy to be moving on.

The first year we lived in Florida, we were delighted to see these big black birds magically appear in October and take up residence in the Australian pines near our house. After a bit of checking with people who'd lived here longer and some googling, we learned that these are Black Vultures. They come here from Texas, they don't build nests and, as far as we can tell, they do not come here to breed. We've never seen a young 'un. By the way, these are all Kim's photographs, some with the new camera even.

It's a bunch of fun to watch them soar and glide. They are really beautiful flyers -- a few flaps to get them out of the tree and they're away. (As an interesting side note, we mentioned to a $cientologist we knew that we thought the birds were lovely and fun to watch. His response? Yuck, they're low-toned [meaning they're not "happy" or "inspiring" or "cheerful"], they're carrion-eaters, and they most definitely are not to be admired! Gotta love those $cienos, huh?)

There's an old dead tree across the street where they congregate in the morning to dry their wings.

One morning when it was foggy (something that doesn't happen often), they came down to our roof and hung out there for a while, apparently waiting for some sun or a breeze.

Sometimes I just lay (lie?) in the grass and watch. They move so gracefully and it's a kick to watch a group of them, slipping and sliding through the sky.

But they are not particularly attractive creatures when they're not flying. They are, after all, vultures.

One of the many things that was horrible about being a $cientologist was having the arrogant attitude that anyone not interested in it was an enemy. Because of that mindset, I intentionally stopped talking to some of the best people I've ever known.

I just want to take this moment to say how grateful I am that Kim and I no longer belong to such a disgusting organization and that I now count as friends people I almost lost forever.

To my almost lost friends: click this.

I really am awful. I'm a holier-than-thou bitch. I know more about what you should and shouldn't do than you do. And I'll be happy to tell you all about it. It doesn't matter what the subject is, I have the answer, you don't. Here's an example: When I was part of the Cof$ (Church of $cientology), I thought anyone who wasn't part of it was an imbecile, too stupid to be bothered with. Now that the bubble has burst and I am free to see the scam, I think anyone still "in" is a stupid, brainwashed, numbnuts who deserves what they get (being scammed by a cunning, money-grubbing cult). I was aware of those feelings, each in their turn. I knew when I was "in" that other $cientologists felt the same way -- it was common to put down "wogs" (the word used by $cnists for unenlightened commoners) and pity them for their ignorance. I was especially good at it. Now that I'm "out," I feel no compunction about my distaste for people who still practice $cn. In my defense, I will say that I feel sorry for the people I knew well and had friendships with. I'm sorry they haven't seen the light and are still giving their hard-earned money (and it's not like they have lots of it) to those thieves.

I'm pretty much always on my soap-box. And my realization today was that it's getting really old. Who do I think I am? I act like I'm the only concerned, intelligent, informed human being on the planet, the only one who's trying to save everyone else. What makes it so much worse is that I smoked for nearly 50 years. sigh. And there wasn't one sanctimonious holier-than-thou asshole telling me to quit. It's an epiphany. I can relax. The world will do whatever it's going to do. sigh. This will take some getting used to.

What do other people do who feel strongly about something? Like the environment, or government interference, or Catholic priests buggering little boys? What do they do? Sit quietly chewing their fingernails? Try to effect change? And if they're trying to effect change, don't they need to get on a soap-box at least a little bit? Hmm. sigh. I obviously need to do some research. I welcome your advice.

No one wants to admit they were sucked in by a slimy, mind-controlling cult. Well, here I am admitting it. Yup. Got sucked right in. Hook, line and sinker. It's an awful thing, waking up one day and realizing you've been had. Really had.

Actually it doesn't quite work that way. The waking up takes a little while. There are clues and hints as you go along that all is not right. But, being the good cultist, you ignore these and keep your head firmly in the ground (or up your butt, peeking out your bellybutton, depending on your "in-ness"). The indoctrination is slow and subtle. At each step of the way, what you're being told about the cult and what you're doing in the cult seem reasonable. Seem reasonable. That's important. You see, if you were really thinking like your usual self, you would clearly see that nothing of what you are told or what you are doing is logical. Big difference.

Think for moment: what would your reaction be if someone said, "We can totally and completely solve all your personal problems. All you need to do is take this free course." Sound too good to be true? That's because it is. But if you're in some emotional pain, or you're young and 'searching' or you like the idea of having THE answers or maybe you just want to be led around by your nose, a free course that claims to be the SOLUTION sounds really wonderful. Let's go, where do I sign? There are many reasons people walk into the clutches of cults like the Moonies or Scientology or Amway Quixtar. And there are very good, well written books on the subject of mind-control as practiced by these cults. I recently read Steve Hassan's Combatting Cult Mind Control and, although his experience was with the Moonies, his description of the techniques used to 'trap' people applied perfectly to Scientology. I highly recommend this well-written book to anyone who has been in a cult, knows someone who's fallen prey, or just wants to understand how a cult works.

Well, this isn't a story about $cientology exactly. It's about a visit to a Caribbean island, I think it was Barbados. And the connection to $cientology is that they have a lovely ship that sails the Caribbean and is used as a 'religious retreat.' What that means is that $cientologists can go live on this ship for a few days or a few months and take courses and get other services. It's very expensive, but it's fun being there. The food is outrageously good. The side trips are wonderful, when you can get 'permission' to go. The ship is called the Freewinds and I made two trips, both at the request of my local $cientology organization.

I was really fortunate on one of these trips to have an opportunity to ride around the island and see lots of different things -- caverns, cafes, beautiful architecture, and incredible views. I'm not big on tourist-type shopping, but I really love the natural things and the people.

The coolest place we went was an orchid garden. A BIG orchid garden. I thought I'd gone to heaven:

My husband Kimball and I are very lucky -- we woke up. Even if it took us a little long to realize how ridiculous $cientology is, the important thing is we got the hell out. We've been 'declared suppressive' because we've spoken out against the cult and none of the people who were our friends are allowed to speak to us. It's such a bizarre experience to walk into a store and see someone you know and like and they won't even look at you. Weird. $cientology cannot allow the 'innies' to have conversations with the folks who have left. The bubble might burst.

I graduated from high school in 1966 and, at the end of the summer, started college at Arizona State University. My best friend Cyndi and I had already started hanging around with a group of college kids we had met in our senior year. At the beginning of the school year we attended parties with these friends and that’s where we both met Kim. Cyndi and Kim started dating and I was dating Kim’s best friend Ross. So we were a foursome. And we were hippies; it was, after all, 1966. Ross and I lived together for a while during that year but eventually we went our separate ways. I moved in with Cyndi and he moved in with Kim. Then Cyndi and Kim broke up as the school year was coming to a close. Kim and I found ourselves alone together more and more and had a little flirtation going on – feet accidentally touching, eyes locking, well, you get the idea.

Two of our friends wanted to go to San Francisco. It was the “summer of love” and I had a great old car just perfect for a road trip. We pulled out the back seat, filled the empty space with pillows and set off. Our many adventures will have to wait for another time, suffice it to say we arrived safely.

That was the beginning of our love affair. We spent two wonderful weeks together exploring the city. Then Kim left for Europe and I went home to Scottsdale, to my mother’s house. When he returned he stayed with me until it was time for him to start school again. I wasn’t going back – I had spent that time learning about Scientology, which, unfortunately, was to become increasingly important in both our lives. I did courses at the mission in Phoenix and then went to England for more. When I got back to Arizona Kim and I were together for a short time. I left again to join what is called the Sea Organization, a Scientology group that requires complete lifetime dedication from its members. I was gone a year and a half – that was all I could take. And I was pregnant. And not married. And I didn’t know where Kim was. I hadn’t seen or written to him for about two years and now was wishing I knew how to get in touch with him. I found out that he had gone to Scotland to work for one of the many Scientology organizations. So I wrote him a Christmas card and casually told him about my situation. He dropped everything and came to Arizona to marry me. He didn’t care one bit that I was pregnant with someone else’s baby. He never even asked me about it. He only wanted us to be together – white picket fence, rose bushes, and all that. He was ready to be my baby’s father. Meanwhile, I was going through a rough patch, full of fear and worry, probably connected to hormonal upheavals. I wasn’t very helpful or communicative and eventually my mother persuaded Kim to leave. (I found this out years later – Kim would gladly have stayed and patiently seen me through whatever nasty business was going on.)

So in February 1970 my daughter Allison was born, healthy and beautiful. I took college classes offered on TV (a very new thing then) and I did a little work for the local Scientology mission. Gradually I completely lost contact with the mission and the other Scientology organizations and went about my life raising my daughter, with my mother’s help. I went back to college and was working on getting a degree when friends in California asked me to house sit for them the summer of 1975. I had not spoken to Kim since he left my mother’s house.

I knew that he had returned to work for Scientology in California and I wanted to marry him. I wrote to him and told him I was coming for the summer and that I was now ready to get hitched. He wrote back saying “YEAH!!” Off we went, Allison and I to stay in Claremont for the summer. About a month before Allison and I had to return to Arizona Kim told me he wasn’t ready to leave what he was doing right at the moment (turns out he had joined the Sea Organization). I said we’d have to call it quits right there because it would be much harder at the end of the summer. Sadly, Allison and I went home to Tempe, without Kim.

Seventeen years went by. Kim had married someone and they had two children together. They left the Sea Organization so they could raise their family. They divorced. I had also married. That marriage lasted about 4 years. Allison was in college when I divorced my first husband, sold the house and bought a small condo. I lived there and worked and kept to myself for 3 ½ years, thinking about Kim all the time.

My friends heard about Kim so often that finally one of them said “Put up or shut up.” I knew that Kim was the only one for me and that if he didn’t want to be with me I would be better off knowing it so I could just get on with my life.

But 17 years had gone by. We hadn’t kept in touch at all, nothing, no letters, no phone calls. How was I supposed to find him? He could have been anywhere. That was the summer that Sleepless in Seattle came out. As I watched it I knew what I had to do. I simply had to find him. I started with L.A. area phone books, looking up Scientology organization numbers. I didn’t call any of them, not in the beginning. I also wrote down a few numbers for Hawkins, still not making any calls. I was terrified. What if he said “Cathy who?” or “Oh please, not again.” Or “It’s great to hear from you, I know you’ll just love my wife and kids, can’t wait for you to meet them.”

Then I saw a movie that had been out a while but I’d never seen: Home Alone. There’s a scene where the little boy is in a church on Christmas Eve, talking to his neighbor. The man said he came to watch his granddaughter in the Christmas pageant on Christmas Eve instead of Christmas day because his son was angry with him and he wanted to avoid a confrontation. The man said he wanted to make up with his son but was scared of what his son would say. The little boy said, “What have you got to lose? He might still be mad at you but he might be glad you talked to him.” Well, that did it.

I started making calls from the phone numbers I had collected. I ran into several dead ends. But one day I called the place where I thought Kim had last worked. I asked for him and was transferred to the woman who had taken his job. I asked her if she knew his address and would she forward a letter if I sent it to her. She said yes to both.

It took another bout of nerves to write the letter and I tried very hard to sound nonchalant. I mailed it and waited to see what would happen.

What happened was that Kim got my letter, went through his own ordeal over what to do, decided to call me (my number was in the letter, of course) and we were married a month later.

After trying for 26 years to have a life together, we finally made it happen on October 3, 1993. We’ve been blissfully married for 14 years (okay, maybe not blissfully the entire time, but certainly now we are sure that this is exactly right). Our rings are engraved with Pour Toujours, for always.

This is the short version. There are innumerable side stories. Another day perhaps.