How I Feel about Scientology in Portland

The stunning new building for the Church of Scientology of Portland, Oregon.

Recently, you may have caught wind that Scientologists in Portland, Oregon held the grand opening of their new Church building.  It is a massive new building, gorgeous in every way, and intensely purposeful in design.   Definitely check out the photos of the building – it’s impressive.

For me – despite the fact that I live on the opposite side of the country – I feel just as proud as the local Scientologists, and just as hopeful for the future as to what this church will bring.

See, for me, Portland is not just another city, but is where I really came into my own as an individual, as an adult, and as a Scientologist.  There are so many ways that the Church of Scientology played an inextricable part of that growth, that I wanted to share at least a bit of that.

How do you quantify personal growth?

Looking back on my history in Portland (where I lived for around 9 years before heading back Eastward), my time in and around the church was punctuated by a number of fairly significant turning points in my life – all of which were helped along by staff and Scientologists around the Portland church.

• Cutting my Teeth as a Community Volunteer:  It was fitting, I think, that the Executive Director of the Portland Marathon spoke at the Grand Opening of the Church, as it was at the Portland Marathon that I did my first work as a Scientology Volunteer Minister – helping runners as they came across the finish line.

  I’ll never forget my first experience there – watching as a confident runner — thinking he was far and away the victor of the marathon – came running energetically to the finish line.  Little did he know, another runner was flying up behind him, and ended up passing him in the final 10 yards of the race.   That formerly-confident runner collapsed in a heap in my arms – his sweaty body now ice cold and feeling like a cadaver.   Getting him helped into a thermal blanket and brought back up to being functional with fluids and a Locational Assist sticks in my mind as my first real action as a community volunteer where I knew for sure I’d helped someone personally.

  It continued with other volunteer work I did with Portland’s Volunteer Ministers, helping sandbag homes and save a local catholic church during the Willamette Valley Flood of 1996.

  It really was in Portland that I decided that my life needed to be about helping others, as that’s where the real satisfaction lay.

• The Key to Life Course:  For quite some time, on my way through high school and college, I had formed a strange personal conclusion that I was unable to learn anything really technical.  I was OK as a designer, I could tinker with computers, but I was stuck making near-minimum wage doing fairly low-end work.  Then, one summer, I decided to do the Key to Life Course at the Portland Church.  The course picks apart the subject of language and one’s ability to understand things conceptually, and what all that has to do with communication.  It is, in a woefully inadequate word, incredible.  Within months after this course, I had upgraded jobs twice, putting me on a new career path as a systems engineer – a career I’ve enjoyed to this day.

• The Use of Communication in Life: On another note, related to the above, I took two different communication courses at the Church in Portland.  After the more advanced course I had come to what was, for me, a pretty life-changing realization:  That any social or life situation could be resolved using communication alone.    It seems so basic – and not only that, but obvious.  But it was something that I really knew then, for myself — that using communication, one no longer had to “hold grudges” or have to have arguments & fights, or harbor disagreements or any other variation of such.And that, in and of itself, is one of the most cherished points of stability I’ve gained as a Scientologist — that you don’t have to sit around with a problem – it can be handled with communication.

There are so many other angles and facets to why the Portland Church of Scientology is so special to me.  Part of it, also, lies in how much this was a whole-community effort spanning so many years, to bring this new building into existence.

As such, I know that there will be so many more stories like mine borne out of this new Church – which has as its mission the empowerment of others and thus the community.

Nice to See it Back in Action

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The new National Affairs Office, originally uploaded by tadnkat.

I snapped this pic on my way back to the Metro today. It’s awful nice to see the Fraser Mansion back in action as the new Church of Scientology National Office. I’ve got so many fantastic memories of being on staff there – I know virtually every square inch of that building. Well, at least I used to. The renos in the building for its new purpose as a meeting ground for all of the Church’s social betterment programs has definitely changed a few of the spaces.

An Evening in the Scientology Academy

Church of Scientology of Washington D.C., Academy Signage, originally uploaded by tadnkat.

Probably one of my favorite parts about the Scientology religion is that one of the main practices of the religion itself involves one simply studying the basic texts of the religion, and working out for oneself how it applies to one’s life.

I never know what it is I’m going to get out of it when I sit down and study. Last night, it led me to this article which I posted today. Sometimes it’s something entirely unexpected that I come to have an understanding of that ‘s just been bugging me personally. But it’s always quite personal — just me and a book, or in the case today – me and a lecture by Mr. Hubbard. I’m not being told what to think or how to think, but am able to work out for myself how some very basics concepts of life fit together.

Like I said in a question & answer post I gave to a college student – one of the things I like best about being a Scientologist is that it provides a constant & steady path for enhancement – a way to be able to learn about life and turn around and apply that to the normal problems of living. I’m nowhere near perfect as a husband, a daddy, a sys admin, or as a member of my town, but little by little, I’m trying to fix the imperfections I can see I have – and that’s pretty satisfying.

Celebrating L. Ron Hubbard’s 101st Birthday

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Celebrated L. Ron Hubbard’s 101st birthday at the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington DC this weekend. 

It really is heartening to see so many people around the globe taking his life and legacy to heart.

Family and my Decision to be a Scientologist

Scientology Cross on the Founding Church of Scientology, Washington, D.C.

A college anthropology student sent me a question from my Scientology Parent page, as she’s doing some study for her class on how family history & background can lead people to various religions.  As she was studying about Scientology, she was curious how my own family and significant events in my life led me to Scientology.   Her questions were thought-provoking on my part (an angle I’d not yet thought about) so I figured I’d post my answers here.

Question:  How does your family history relate to your quest for meaning in life? How has the history of your family led you to Scientology?

I touched on this when I was answering a similar question for another student here, but I’ll try to tackle both parts of that question.

My mother and father were both Scientologists at the time I was born, both of them becoming involved with the religion about 4 years prior.   Until I was about 9 years old, we lived out on a 10-acre farm in mid-coast Maine, in a town of about 600 people.    Our nearest Scientology organization was in Boston, about 4 hours to the south, so I didn’t spend much time in the Church as I was growing up.    I knew quite well that my parents were Scientologists, though.  My parents quite liberally used Scientology Assists with my sister and I, a practice that instantly made sense to me and which I found helpful.  Other various basic tenets of Scientology found their way into conversations & questions that I’d pose, but it wasn’t until I was about 7 that I think I started to choose my own way on Scientology a bit.

See, I did have a number of friends who went to local churches on Sundays.  They’d attend their Sunday school as well.  I do remember posing questions to my parents and to my friends about why they went to church.   The only reason I could seem to get anyone to tell me was because they were meant to go to church, and that they did that because they were christian.   The reasoning seemed quite circular to me at the time (go to church because you’re christian because you have to go to church) and I wasn’t really tracking – there didn’t seem to be a purpose, and it seemed to my 9-year-old logic to be a great way to waste a Sunday when you could be out building a fort in the woods.

But I did learn that when my parents went to their Scientology church, they explained to me that it was always for a purpose.  They were always there doing a specific course of study or counseling action, one which had real-world benefit and was to help them with something that could be actually articulated (even to a 9-year-old) as a tangible benefit.   I naturally asked if I could take a course too, and enrolled onto a course communication course.  At the end of that communication course, I honestly felt I had learned something – I had figured out how to communicate better, I figured out that I could get my point across clearly, I understood why people didn’t like being interrupted, and that it was enjoyable for both parties when you’d acknowledge when you understood what they said.

And for me, at that point, it did really set the bar for all religion.  For me, my expectation was that, in going to church, one should be going so as to achieve some benefit to one’s life that one actually desires oneself, and not because of some fuzzily-understood moral/social obligation to “go to church”. 

The very next course I took in Scientology had to do with L. Ron Hubbard’s study technology.  And amongst all things, one thing that I learned is that the first barrier to learning anything is the idea that you already know all about it.  And if there’s someone who already “knows it all” it’s a spunky 9-year-old.   But that one stable datum has carried me through a lot of study and efforts to really understand life around me.

An interesting illustration of this:  I recently re-took that selfsame first course in Scientology – the Success Through Communication Course, just recently – doing the course together with my wife.  And the same exact principles that taught a 9 year old the value of actually communicating with parents & friends, was able to re-teach my wife and I how to communicate to each other and to our kids.   I wrote my thoughts on that here.

Question: What were some important milestones in your personal history that led to your choice to become a Scientologist?

Well, as I said above, I think that the key milestone for me which led me to being a Scientologist was where I took my first course – one that I completed at a small Portland, Maine outreach office of the Boston Scientology church.

The other reinforcing aspect I had to this was in watching my parents after taking Scientology services.  They would sometimes go down to the Scientology religious retreat in Clearwater, Florida for counseling services and to study.  Each time, when they came back, there would be this certain, difficult-to-describe, serenity or – really - certainty about their demeanor which indicated to me that they had resolved something personally, or had overcome something personally in their study, something difficult-to-describe which left them better and happier at the end.  It was something that I knew I wanted as well – I wanted to know that I had looked into myself, and found in myself what I wanted to change, and had done what I could to make that better.

At the time, as a kid, the one thing that was real to me was that I wanted to be fast as a student, and I wanted to be happy and motivated.  So, I approached a lot of my studies in Scientology with this in mind.

But later, the more I studied, the more I could see things in myself that were ripe for improvement.  My level of responsibility, my ability to absorb & understand new subjects, my ability to choose my friends and to know when relationships with others were dragging me down – these were all things I learned that I could do something about through Scientology and weren’t just things I needed to “understand I couldn’t change” or “learn to live with”.

But I’d say that by the time I was about 11, I was completely, and by my ownvery conscious decision, a Scientologist.

And, as you can see from my writing, that’s not something I’ve regretted.     Hopefully that answers your questions.

Aggregator for Scientology-Related Blog Posts

As an aid to find out what’s happening in the Scientology blogosphere, have a look at sites.dissem.org – a list of Scientology-related blogs that I’m keeping up with.   It’s by no means a complete list, but it’s got the majority of the good ones.   In terms of ways to use it:

• Just browse:  The site picks up new articles within seconds of when they’re published.  So, just hitting the home page of the site, you’re guaranteed to find the freshest Scientology-related news from around the world.
• Use the Search Box!  The site automatically imports the tags & categories of each blog post, as well as any text provided in the feed.  So, just try searching for “parenting” or “St. Louis” or “volunteer ministers” and the site will give you recent posts on each of those subjects.
• Use the feeds: If you have your own Scientology-related blog or website, you can easily put a list of recent Scientology-related posts on your site by grabbing the RSS feed.   Feeds are also available for any search term or tag as well.  So, let’s say you have a blog on Volunteer Minister activity in your area.     Just go to the  Volunteer Ministers category on the sites.dissem.org site, and then just add /feed to the address, like this.  That will give you an RSS feed you can use to plug into a widget on your WordPress / Drupal / Joomla site to give you an always-fresh list of posts about Volunteer Minister activity.
• Comment!  A great way to help each of these sites is to comment on posts that interest you.  Clicking on the “Write Comment” link on any of the posts will take you to the comments field for that website.  Handy.

If you have a Scientology-related blog that promotes Scientology activities in your area, or one that represents any of the various activities Scientologists are involved in locally, such as Anti-Drug, The Way to Happiness, Human Rights education, etc, and you wish to have it added – just fill out the contact form here.

Playing While we Trim the Tree



Testing out the new quick post function on the WordPress Android app, with a photo of my son playing in the chapel of the DC Church of Scientology.

Blogs I’m Reading: Scientology in St. Louis

For the last several hundred years (or perhaps longer) the activity of putting together a new church for the town has been a very rich community affair, drawing together the skills, efforts and energies of the parishioners in the community, and of neighboring communities. 

In that tradition, Scientology communities around the world have been quite intensely engaged in the construction of new premises to better suit and service their communities.  Scientologists refer to this new breed of church as an “Ideal Organization”, in reference to an essay L. Ron Hubbard wrote entitled, “The Ideal Org” – the substance of which is more finely detailed in this post on Ideal Churches of Scientology.

 

But one such project that I’ve been following with great interest is that of the Church of Scientology of St. Louis.  

 

The Executive Director of the St. Louis Church has a blog which is filled with interesting anecdotes as they happen, as well as some truly intriguing articles – like this one on the topic of Guy Fawkes day.

Definitely worth a read!

My 9/11 Story

There is something I can always get into a colourful discussion with, with just about anyone — especially other Scientologists, which is the curious question of, “Where were you on September 11th, 2001?”

Now that it’s  10 years after these disasters happened in DC and New York, I figured I’d revisit this.  Unfortunately for those who were there, it’s generally known to the world as “the day the Twin Towers went down”.  The Pentagon is generally a totally forgotten piece to the story, and I’ve come across many people (especially amongst friends on the West Coast) that didn’t even know the Pentagon got hit.

But when I look back on it, I don’t look back at 9/11 as a time of sheer horror – but instead as a time when my friends and I really had a personal re-awakening, and a honing of purpose with respect to helping others – and not just focusing in on looking out for ourselves.

My own September 11th story has a bit of color to it.

In 2001, I was with the Founding Church of Scientology of Washington, D.C. – amongst other things working in the area of personnel as well as on various promotional tasks.  I lived in Falls Church, Virginia, and rode my mountain bike in to the Church’s location in Dupont Circle, DC each day.  Anyone who knows DC traffic knows that it can be significantly faster to take a bike than a car sometimes, especially when the Pentagon is in full swing.   I’d ride in each day partially on the road, and until the Pentagon Annex, and then would take the bike path down the hill, past the old Pentagon helipad, and then across the Memorial Bridge.

In any case, a few days before, on the 8th of September or so, I went up to the Church’s New York City regional office for some training.   I was staying in a friend’s house in midtown Manhattan, and was all set to leave on the morning of Tuesday, September 11th when all of the sudden I was rustled out of bed by my friend.

“DUDE, GET UP!  The World Trade Center just exploded!”

We  raced up to his roof to see the plume of smoke coming from the first tower.  Being on 43rd St, we couldn’t hear a thing, but could definitely see the smoke.   Not knowing what in the sam hell was happening, we raced down to catch the news, just in time to see the 2nd plane hit the other tower.  The rest unfolded like the rest of the world saw it, and both towers came down.  Again, up on 43rd st, we could see it occur, but couldn’t hear it at all — so to us it was just like some terrible, awful movie.

Of course, being Scientologists, our first impulse was to go do something about it, so we raced outside to get down to the Church management building, so we could get organized.

The people outside were in a total daze.  It was really terrible to behold.  Like the entirety of New York had all just stumbled out of the same bad movie, in a complete disbelief of what had just happened.

Not too much later, the Church had started to organize up teams that were going to go down and start getting in there and pitching — something that has now become the stuff of legend.  I was definitely urged to stay and get down there, but unfortunately most people in New York had already also forgotten that my home city had just been hit as well.

I unfortunately could not get out of Manhattan until Tuesday the 12th at about 6pm, as the entire island was entirely locked-down.  The night of Tuesday, September 11th was one of the most surreal I have ever experienced.  A walk to Times Square allowed me a view of something I will never see again this lifetime:  a Vanilla-Sky-like view, where I could look all the way up and down Broadway, and there was not one single car on the road.  Not one.  It was a ghost town.  The only thing open was McDonalds, and some hearty individuals were there sharing their stories and their friendship.  It was a very, very different crowd than I’ve ever seen, especially in New York.

I got a 6pm train out of Penn Station the next day, stopping about 8 times on the way to DC so that the K9 search teams could go through the train cars looking for terrorists.   I finally arrived back to DC that night, to see the horror that became of the Pentagon.

In addition to punching a hole through what the hard workers there had just spent years renovating, the bastard terrorists had just skidded across the same bike path I took to the Church every day — and had happened to blast through it at exactly the same time as I used to ride past it.   So, I guess it was good that I happened to be in NYC at the time, or I would have found myself blasted into the side wall of the Pentagon, along with my bike.

But members of our Church worked hard to get folks in the area back on their feet following the disaster.    I spent my next several months helping the Church build its corps of Volunteer Ministers, and then went on to do many more things to promote the cause of Scientology Volunteer Ministers world over.   I spent days and nights getting volunteers to help in the aftermath of disasters like Hurricane Katrina and the Indian Ocean tsunamis, as well as the more recent Haiti disaster.

For me, 9/11 was a wake-up call.  It was extremely in-my-face demonstration that all was not right in the world.  Obviously the answer to such things is not in fighting, in invading, or in creating a homeland-security-police-state terror patrol to constantly remind people that the terrorists are out-t’getcha.  The answer is to dig out at the roots of the problem of what ails the individual, and make each person better and more able to take responsibility for their environment.

I don’t think I’ve gone a single week since then without applying myself toward helping my fellow man.   What was your 9/11 experience?

Preserving the Authenticity of my Religion

I personally have quite a bit of respect for all great religions of the world.  I think that by and large, their founders and original proponents were quite enlightened, and had some fairly star-high goals for man – both in terms of morality and enhancing mankind’s ability to interact with one another, as well as high goals for mankind’s inherent spirituality.

Hear-say or Heresy?

There’s been an impediment that (I would say) every religion has had to deal with, however, and that is with respect to the communication and preservation of their exact religious beliefs, scriptures and teachings.  In the earlier days of man, the primary way that beliefs and customs could be passed on generation to generation was in song, in the spoken word, and in some cases – someone was bright enough to write down what it was that they heard into book form.

Unfortunately there is often a wide variance between what the founder of a religion actually said, and what the individual who hears it all verbally takes away from such an experience.

Every religion has this issue to one degree or another.  From the Bhagavad-Gita to the King James edition of the bible, so many enlightened texts have relied in whole or in part on the interpretation of another (or of committees & parliamentary bodies) on what the founder originally taught.

Now please understand, I mean positively no disrespect to any enlightened text which forms the scripture of any religion.  In all cases, having such beliefs written at all has uplifted hundreds of generations, and that can’t be discounted.

Case in Point

My reason for writing this, is I recently finished a study of the Dianetics Professional Course lectures at the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington, DC.

The Dianetics Professional Course lectures were originally known for some decades as a book called “Notes on the Lectures” – a compiled book, taken from the notes of students who were there in the fall of 1950, listening to L. Ron Hubbard give the lecture.  It was assumed for some years that the original taped recordings of the lectures were lost, so this verbal transcription – amounting to what the students understood from the lectures as they were given – were all that remained.

Then, just a few years ago, the original tapes of the lectures were located.  However, due to the fact that the tapes had been sitting in suboptimum storage for over 50 years, it was assumed that they were not going to able to be reproduced for public listening.  However, after a massive effort by Golden Era Productions, the tapes were in fact able to be restored so that all could listen to them.

A fantastic video to watch which gives the details of how much care was put into such, is available to watch on the Scientology website:

Now, I’ve had the opportunity to read the previously-issued Notes on the Lectures book nearly-back-to-back with the actual lectures that Mr. Hubbard gave, and the result is pretty horrifying.  There are some portions of the book where you can fairly well understand which lecture it is that the student note-takers were talking about, as it seemed they were tracking with the lecture.

In other places, though – especially with some of the diagrams they came up with, it seems like they either missed the point entirely, or were making up their own vision of what Mr. Hubbard was talking about.

The actual lectures give the first, best, and most amazing view of the relationship of the properties of affinity, reality (agreement) and communication, and how they relate to a person’s mental health. It’s really quite an amazing study – even if someone studying it wasn’t planning on giving someone a Dianetics session.  I’ll write more of what I got from it on my Scientology parenting site.

But my painful realization, in this case, was not only how wildly off-base the Notes on the Lectures book had been, but it gave me such a respect for entities like Religious Technology Center, and the Chairman of the Board RTC, Mr. David Miscavige, who have as their mission preserving the purity of the Scientology religion.

It made me wonder – how much of what we know of today’s world religions is actually how the founder or spiritual leader taught or said?  How much of it was faithfully passed on with fidelity, and how much was either altered completely or made up whole cloth?  That much, we’ll unfortunately never know.