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.

Google Questions Answered on Scientology – Episode #1

As this is a personal site with a rather varied set of topics related to Scientology, I get some interesting results in terms of search terms people use to arrive at my site.  Some of them are understandable, others – well, not so much.   But I figured it might be of interest to give a bit more info for some of this week’s top search terms, just to make sure future searchers find what they’re looking for:

“what do scientologists say about earthquakes”

An interesting Google search indeed.  Not sure what “Scientologists say” except for that they happen, and when they do, some tragic results can ensue.  Obviously it’s incumbent upon the science community to be able to better predict them, but in terms of handling the results, Scientologists have been extremely active.  The Scientology Volunteer Ministers blog has info on what our teams are currently doing in Japan as a result of the recent tsunami, and the Scientology VM site has more info on what our volunteers have done in the wake of other disasters. 

“scientology ybor grand opening youtube”

Photos of the Grand Opening of the new Ybor Square Church of Scientology in Tampa are here, and I think the video you’re after of the Grand Opening is right here:

 

“becoming a member of the scientology church”

Well, that’s a fairly easy one.  If you were Googling this because you were wondering why someone might be a Scientologist, I did a fairly detailed write up here.  If you were wondering on what’s involved with being a Scientologist, well, it’s easy enough to just check out some of the free courses in Scientology that are available on-line, apply it and see if it works for you.   If you have any questions, just ask.

 

“difference between ias and able scientology”

The IAS is the International Association of Scientologists – the official membership association of the Scientology religion.  The purpose of the IAS is: “To unite, advance, support and protect the Scientology religion and Scientologists in all parts of the world, so as to achieve the aims of Scientology as originated by L. Ron Hubbard.”  I wrote more on the IAS here, and you can find out more about the programs that the IAS supports in a nutshell on this video.

ABLE is the Association for Better Living and Education.  In a nutshell, ABLE has the purpose of reversing the social decay that threatens our societies by resolving the worst problems that plague man today — drugs, crime, illiteracy and immorality.  While supported by the actions of many Scientologists and non-Scientologists alike, ABLE is a secular (non-religious) activity, and uses the technologies of L. Ron Hubbard to forward four major areas:

• Narconon International
• Criminon International
• Applied Scholastics International
• The Way to Happiness Foundation International.

You can find out more about each of these areas on their site.  Hope that answers the question!

 

“i’m a scientologist how do i raise my children”

I have a site dedicated to that question.    Let me know if there’s a question on parenting which is not answered on that site, and I’ll take it up!

“church of scientology staff”

There were about 6 different permutations of that search term in the last week.  You can see my take on being on staff in a Scientology organization here.   I know of at least one person who’s now on staff after reading this, so that’s a good thing.  Let me know if you have any questions about being on staff and I’ll answer them. 

“scientology reviews”

Interesting – quite a few searches this week for “Scientology Reviews”.  Well, I’ll certainly give you my review of Scientology.

 

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Curious to see what the next week turns up in searches!

Mr. David Miscavige’s Address at the Opening of the New Fort Harrison

David Miscavige at the Fort Harrison Grand Opening

I just came across this article of Mr. David Miscavige‘s  speech given at the grand opening of the newly-renovated Fort Harrison hotel in Clearwater, FL.

I was just in Clearwater for the holidays, and so got a chance to see the magnificent new Fort Harrison hotel, but didn’t get a chance to attend the grand opening back in March.  As such, I was pleasantly surprised to see the full text of the speech made available on the Religious Technology Center site.   Really puts the magnitude and scope of that building’s importance into perspective!