A Midwest Journal

What do these three have in common? Simple:

1. They have to threaten you to get what they want.
2. They are based on convenient fictions.
3. They need your money to survive.

Of course, they also are all government related, but they also prey on your basic needs. And they are all scams, but what else is new…

Global Warming does exist, but it runs in cycles, both on 30 years periods, and also 1500-year and even longer cycles. Al Gore and his fictions started out with bogus data inside a Powerpoint, which was compounded by scientists who falsified their data in order to get or preserve huge government subsidies. Gore himself profits by this with his personal company that makes money off selling “carbon credits”. …While he meanwhile lives in a huge mansion and flies jets around to accept his awards.

The IRS was originally voted into law on the basis that they would tax the “very rich” in order to pay for the Civil War. Of course, since then it has started picking all of our pockets. It’s a favorite boondoggle of politicians, who riddle the code with inconsistencies on behalf of various corporate lobbyists. And these same politicians – who never think in terms of saving money by cutting spending or a balanced budget – only proclaim that we would “lose money” if we cut taxes. (But practically, we have the evidence of actually raising revenue as well as providing more jobs in each instance where presidents cut them: Kennedy, Reagan, Bush.)

Scientology threatens excommunication from friends and family if you don’t go along with their demands and keep supporting their financial causes. They got their IRS exemption as a “church” by actually suing and threatening the IRS and its officials itself. And the Anonymous protests continue due to the C of S denied-but-practiced policy of enforced disconnection. Of course, no one can trace where all those millions which their parishioners spend (mostly tax-free) with them goes. Or how hard it is to get it back, even when you are a celebrity. (And of course, these facts have to be documented, while the other two are more common knowledge.)

How to stop their bullying

All is not sad, however. Tracking back these commonalities also show us how to get free from their effects.

It has to do with people not wanting to return the way they came into this world – helpless, penniless, dependent. Essentially, they continue learning to thrive by exploiting the Lester Levenson buttons of control, approval, and security. If you learn to accept (or welcome) these and let them go (or release), you don’t have to stay effect of any of these. (Of course getting scam-free has been laid out “Get Your Self Scam Free”…)

And the other point is to learn to do with less government in your life. Because none of these would continue to exist if you didn’t give away so many of your rights to others.

Now, these all may seem far too simple. But these simple solutions work. It just takes a lot of people applying them personally. The only real side effect is that you get more personal Freedom, Happiness, and Peace of Mind showing up in your life.

A far cry from how government officials and their flunkies sleep at night.

Here’s wishing you a scam-free life.

Just woke up from a nightmare involving Scientology and L. Ron Hubbard. Which is weird, since it’s been years. Used to have them regularly. And practically, only my study of Huna as a comparative belief-system actually was able to get any sense of these (and make them quit).

Scientology is a closed system, a religion which doesn’t believe in any God, but rather emphasizes the spirituality of the individual.

It’s run by a corporate cult, in that in order to live and work and succeed around that organization, you have to believe and act in certain ways. A lot of that involves kowtowing (bowing deeply in subservience) to the existing corporate heads and to Hubbard in absentia.

From an outsiders’ view, simply look how North Korea acts and you’ll have some parallels.

Sure, I’m being critical here. Probably the last time I’ll bring this up.

But there’s a difference between the philosophy of Scientology and what Hubbard created as a management body to carry on after he left. Even Anonymous - on it’s two-year anniversary of protesting against this corporation – respects the beliefs of those followers and staff, but not the decisions the corporation makes and continues.

Philosophically, Scientology was taken off the rails right at a policy called Keeping Scientology Working, where Hubbard said that he alone created and distilled this body of work and that no one else was going to be permitted to help him with this after that point. Lots of contribution helped him get to where he was. And when you look over his work, you’ll find that he got all of his ideas (yes, every single one) from some earlier author. Everything can be traced back. Everything.

In order to sort out my own head after 20+ years as staff, I’ve had to do considerable amount of this back-tracking. I’ve described this scene graphically:

Imagine a basketball court whose floor is filled with ice cream sundaes. From side to side, right up to the bleachers which surround it. Scientology is the cherries picked off all those sundaes. The best part (and most filling) has been left on the floor. People are told who study this work that “that is all there is”. But frankly, they are missing the best part.

While Hubbard would tell people in his “Way to Happiness” to not be critical and to treat others according to the Golden Rule, he didn’t follow his own advice. His recorded lectures are intensely critical of many different subjects. You can find all of Hubbard’s recordings online now – check it out for yourself.

Essentially, he wanted to get rich and was successful in that. He also died mysteriously, on psychiatric drugs. No family or friends present, only a caretaker who was last heard about as hiding from corporate Scientology.

But you take Hubbard’s belief-system and compare it with Alan Watt’s description of Zen that he gave in a lecture once. He said Zen has no doctrine, no dogma, no belief-system you have to accept. It’s simply a way of life.

Now then, if one must try to say something about what Zen is, and I want to do this by way of introduction, I must make it emphatic that Zen, in its essence, is not a doctrine. There’s nothing you’re supposed to believe in. It’s not a philosophy in our sense, that is to say a set of ideas, an intellectual net in which one tries to catch the fish of reality.

Scientology is no way of life. It’s a dogmatic belief-system enforced by threat of excommunication and shunning. And even Hubbard agrees that Zen Buddhism civilized the bulk of this planet.

It’s actually easier to research Scientology than it is Alan Watts. My opinion on why this is so is that the corporate structure Hubbard formed is so destructive in the actions it takes that it engenders antipathetic comments and criticism. Fuels the very fire that is burning it.

I should know, I was part of it for years. And for those I hurt with my actions, I apologize.

Since, I’ve worked as I can through my books,  this blog, and other sites to help others find their own way out of the winding labyrinth which Hubbard created through his corporate Scientology. You’ll see on this blog that I’ve got several proposals which can help people get their own life back.

So others don’t have to have recurring nightmares anymore.

This write-up was probably overdue. In October, it will be a decade since I left. And it’s only been through an intense study of scams in the last two years, where I saw that the “long arm” of the legal and PR branches of corporate Scientology are nothing to fear. Rather, they are subject to simple pity. Even the heads of these branches have been leaving that sinking ship in droves, lately.

Your life is and has always been your own. Live it as best you can. And any current or former Scientologist who wants to get relief – just contact me via this blog. I’ll help as best I can.

Internet scams and corporate cults are very similar to each other.

And since I’ve been on the dirty end of several (plus having written a couple of books on the subject), I figure that I can sit here and explain it a bit more…

A funny thing happened to me recently. A couple of associates of mine, who shared my many years in the Scientology cult/scam/belief-system, were also dissing me for my PhD in Comparative Religions in an online forum.

Now, I don’t have to defend where and how I got my education and my many sheepskins. I freely admit that what Robert Worstell does is easily considered a scam.

And that is the only real difference between myself and those who are all self-righteous about their little operations and how pristinely they run them. I at least admit that I can be considered a scammer. They are too touchy on that subject. (And “pride goes before a fall”…)

Those couple of knuckleheads (amicably called) didn’t bother to spend a few years of their own lives in various educational systems getting any degrees or certificates from anywhere after they “got out” of Scientology. Or at least they don’t admit or disclose it…

Not that it makes any difference. The difference between Sedona University and Harvard is that I didn’t have to pay as much. It’s not the paper you have on your wall or the initials behind your name, but what you do with it – what value you give to others once you completed any training program.

The difference between the richest man in the US and the second-richest man is that one is a college drop-out from Harvard and the other got his degree from a non-”Ivy League” university. Both are outrageously successful. You could have asked Sam Walton, who only ever got a Bachelors from University of Missouri – what was it like creating what has become one of the largest multi-national retailers? Both Oracle’s and Dell’s founders (both on that richest person list) are also college drop-outs.

So these Ivy League “higher education” places are really running scams. To the degree that they tell people they have to follow certain protocols and beliefs in order to succeed in life, they are as well a corporate cult. And making money hand-over-fist is something they also have in common with Scientology.

Scientology differs from these as it is a corporate cult which hems people in on a much wider variety of beliefs that they “have” to hold onto. Much like these secret clubs as George W. Bush and John F. Kerry belonged to. (Difference between Bush and Kerry? Bush got better grades…)

But don’t think I’m bitter about spending20+ years in Scientology. Actually, if it weren’t for all that I learned inside that set-up, I wouldn’t now be able to write books on self-help subjects and help people avoid scams.

If someone wants to get into Scientology and learn about life that way – go right ahead. It’s much better than a lot of other corporate cults.  And they’ll be the first to tell you that if someone is there against their will, they won’t get all possible gains available to them.

The points I most like from this bunch are those they really don’t apply too well – like their own “Way to Happiness”, which is essentially built around the Golden Rule.  Their “Essay on Personal Integrity” would actually take people right out of that belief system – if you religiously followed and applied it.

Another great one is an old poem adopted as corporate policy, which goes something like:

“There’s so much good in the worst of us,

And so much bad in the best of us,

That is ill behooves any of us,

To talk about the rest of us.” (– Anon.)

So I’m doing all I can to help people make the best possible choices for their lives. And I encourage others to do the same. Being critical just doesn’t help anyone with anything. (And there are a lot of critics inside and outside Scientology, as well as through the rest of this world.) But being critical of others just invites criticism of you, doesn’t it?

Constructively giving others options is probably a more survival outlet to explore.

Just another controversial post – but people have been looking for this, so I’m obliging…

(Disclaimer: No corporate entity for Scientology or Sedona Method has approved this post or my descriptions – their trademarks remain their own. This doesn’t pretend to be an authoritative treatise, merely an overview for casual study. Do your own study, come to your own conclusions.)

My history with Scientology covered 20-some years. It’s the biggest scam I’ve ever encountered, yet I’m not particularly upset or even all that critical of what I’d been through and gave up in order to forward their set-up. Because Levenson’s Sedona Method actually helped me get over it.

And sure, on behalf of Scientology’s stated and working goals, I’ve participated in my fair share of their scams – forwarding them by working for next to nothing. Since then, I’ve worked to un-do some lesser scams out of Utah which only ripped off their money, not years of their lives.

Comparing Lester Levenson with L. Ron Hubbard will probably be the best way to approach this. What we’ll deal with is the incontestable data about each and also the commonalities they shared.

Levenson and Hubbard biographical data

Hubbard was so controversial, and so much data has been explored about him, there are actually just a handful of data which are uncontested:

Hubbard was born May 9, 1911 in Tilden, Nebraska. Father was in the Navy, Mother was a school teacher. He was a Boy Scout and flew gliders for a few years, around the time he attended college in Washington D.C – whether he completed is under dispute. He joined the Navy and left with a medical discharge. While he wrote for the fiction pulps, he’s best known for his Dianetics book, which was a NYT bestseller in 1950. (Later sales records are disputed.) Founding various organizations, he’s most known for his Scientology, which has been promoted as a church. Hubbard held various (disputed) management positions until his death in January 24 1986 (under mysterious circumstances, never fully explained). Hubbard’s personal accomplishments, other than his millions amassed from creating and running Scientology, are mostly all disputed. Basic reason is that he exaggerated (or lied) about nearly all aspects of his life and the actual details can’t be accurately, independently verified. Hubbard left no independently verifiable biography or autobiography.

Lester Levenson’s life is much more straightforward.

Born July 19,1909 in Eliabeth, New Jersey, Levenson graduated from Rutgers in 1931, trained as a physicist, and in both electrical and mechanical engineering, and also qualified for a teaching certificate. He was successful at everything he worked at, from teaching, to lunchionettes, to engineering, lumber, house construction, and mining. However, he was literally working himself to death. By 1952, at the age of 42, Lester found himself on the brink of death after his second heart attack. Suffering also from chronic jaundice, kidney stones, migraine headaches, and perforated ulcers, Lester’s doctor gave up on him and sent him home to die. Instead, Levenson used his mind to figure out what was going on with himself, regain his health, and reach a high level of personal awareness. It took him years of studying all the various spiritual and religious teachings that he could lay his hands on in order to both understand it and be able to communicate it to others effectively. Levenson died in 1994 of cancer. Most of this data came from his published autobiography.

Differences, Similarities and everything else.

The differences are many. While Hubbard was outgoing and commercial with his spritual work, Levenson was basically shy and non-commercial with his spiritual work. Even today, those who carry on his work do not charge outrageous sums for the work they do – which cannot be said of Hubbard’s Scientology – which owns a 440 foot luxury yacht as well as numerous hotels. Corporately, many of the individual “church” buildings are owned by the central management.

There is no similar comparative in real estate ownership for any of the current  Sedona Method marketers.

While corporate Scientology maintains a high-level of control over their trademarks and Hubbard’s copyrighted materials, the Sedona method has several individuals with their own organizations, as well as differing training and counseling materials.

While Levenson knew of Dianetics and Scientology (per his tapes), Scientology put the Sedona Institute on it’s “enemy list” of “suppressive groups”.

On a technical level, both Levenson and Hubbard used a form of emotional scale to denote progress from a lower level to the top – in both cases having apathy at the bottom and a high state of detached sublimity at the top.

Personal Gains Available

Another parallel was the claims by both Hubbard and Levenson that unusual events could be made to occur by people who had attained high states of beingness. In both belief-systems, these results cannot be clinically reproduced – however, cases are historically noted of having occurred for all these events mentioned. Individual cases in each belief-system are documented. Such events have never been reliably studied in peer-reviewed experiments. (While some studies in remote viewing have been documented, it has not been done consistently with high-level releases of either Scientology or the Sedona Method.)

And of course, this doesn’t mean that you can’t personally get results from either or both fields of studies. Factually, the Sedona Method can be used to solve problems for those who are out, in, or leaving Scientology. (Those just getting into Scientology won’t feel they need it.) Scientology, however, has a narrow view against mixing in anything Hubbard didn’t authorize (which is anything without his name on it, basically.) So while a former or non-corporate-affiliated Scientologist can get relief from using the Sedona Method, anyone else out of the above would find it interfering with their potential progress.

While both Levenson and Hubbard studied Eastern sources as well as Western, Hubbard has been shown to have either misunderstood or misinterpreted those teachings, and Levenson was far closer to the mark. While Hubbard would take other data and compile it into Scientology, Levenson would use those teachings to simply explain what he had encountered. Both considered that they had something new which hadn’t been seen or used before.

If both are considered as scams, Sedona Method costs much, much less and has none of the socially controversial practices maintained by Scientology. While in Sedona you can leave any time you want, attempting to leave Scientology can get you shunned – separated from still-practicing friends and family – for a lifetime.

To each their own

While I started out to talk about “masters” and wannabe’s, I don’t now feel this is useful to either camp. What you get out of any particular side of this – or any other belief system  – is dependent entirely on how much you involve yourself, and how much faith you maintain in the subject. As well, your journey is practically and only able to be figured out for yourself. There is no one path up the mountain, and no one school has all the teachers. What works for you is what works for you.

The anti-scam forums are replete with accusations about nearly every beneficial group or practice out there. Most are hypercritical to an extreme. While a true scam takes your money and gives you little or nothing of value, these two subjects can both take you into heights of certainty and confidence you’ve never experienced before.

And talking (or bad-mouthing) about the miracles or unusual events a certain guru or Master can personally achieve or create just makes it harder for others to follow in those footprints. To each their own seems the best advice. Take what you can from the buffet you are presented with and use what works for you.

In some circles, the phrase goes – “All life is a series of lessons. Study well.”

Good Hunting!

Been listening to some great stuff that should give a solution to the Scientology problem.

It’s a problem because there is a lie inside it.

And I’m not going to either justify Hubbard or his Scientology, nor will I negate it.

I’m saying that there is a life after it, and that there is a tool which will both help a person enhance the gains they experienced and also allow them to move on – or to stay in.

That solution is the Sedona Method. With this simple set of processes (and there are only 5), you can get relief from any suffering you’ve endured on behalf of or due to the management of Scientology.

I’ve read that it’s estimated that it takes 12 years to “get over” Scientology. Unfortunately, this isn’t true. Anything you resist, you get. And as you continue to hold onto the difficulties and inequities of that belief-system, there is no “getting over”.

By using the Sedona Method, a scientifically proven method-set which has been around since the early 50’s, you can get relief form any significant remaining charge you have about how you’ve been treated through the various Scientology organizations.

For those who want advanced studies, there are some tapes I’ve been listening to from the founder of the Sedona Method, Lester Levenson. These will really show some very simple and basic laws which the whole study of Scientology was based – but were heuristically discovered by Levenson when he was sent home to die at the age of 42. A trained physicist and engineer, he has many parallels to Hubbard, but has left a legacy which grows independent of any corporate structure.

But the key is that you can apply it yourself, or get with “co-auditors” to apply it to each other.

The most expensive package, which contains 20 CD’s and a workbook, is still only around $300 – $400. A free introductory CD and DVD is found at the main site, sedona.com

So you can find this all out for yourself at no or little cost.

I’m giving you this data as I’ve been struggling along with all my own baggage since I left my 20+ year Sea Org career at the end of 2000. And finally, I’ve gotten the peace in this area I’ve been looking for in all those years.

You should check this stuff out.

Contact me via this blog and I’ll help you anyway I can to make the transition. Not in selling you anything or telling you what you need to believe, but just to listen.

And you can comment below, as well.

After all, with what you’ve already been through, what do you have to lose?

Offered in compassion and understanding for all that every Scientologist has been through:

0. Realize that Scientology is only workable in that tight, little belief-system. It isn’t all that workable outside in the real world. What you find workable depends on much larger and more powerful truths that have been around a much longer time – before this planet’s written history, actually. What you personally find workable in Scientology is true for you – and resonates with you based on these larger truths which operate this universe we live in.

1. Get over any hostility or upset you feel toward Scientology or any Scientologist. You can control your attitudes – this was known by William James and even Aristotle, but is older that the Greeks. Hatred only burns you out inside. Learn to smile and change how you feel about things. Learn how to relax when stress hits your lines.

2. Clean up your room, your car, your home, your immediate living spaces. Get rid of anything that reminds you of Scientology. Throw it away or sell it. Replace it with something positive and aesthetic.

3. Where you can, disconnect or limit your contact with any active Scientologists for at least one month (or more if necessary). This will allow your new personal surroundings to help you cool off and re-center on more positive attitudes. To those you still have to deal with on a regular basis, be charitable and upbeat with them. (Smile and nod if you can’t think of anything polite to say…)

4. Develop an open-minded attitude toward anything related to Scientology. Try to look at everything from as many possible viewpoints as possible. Seek the truth – which is something personal to you. Work to question and understand all your beliefs so you know why you believe that way and how it actually works for you, personally.

5. Surround yourself with inspirational and supportive material from many diverse authors. Listen to recordings during your commute and when you can during the day. Turn off the TV and any source which upsets you. Seek to live a peaceful life, in harmony with your surroundings. Learn from many sages and distill their wisdom into your own.

6. Write up your own experiences in a journal, a diary, or online. This is how you can learn from your decisions and actions. This allows you to get closure from any mistakes or lapses in judgment you may have experienced. Be charitable with yourself and seek to discover your own personal truths.

7. Discover your own purpose for your life. Find out what things make you happy and work to get these happening more often in your life. Let your purpose discover you – and act on what you find to get on-purpose in your life.

8. Stay positive. Those negatives of Scientology and life in general don’t have to affect you unless you want to let them. Again, you can control your own attitude. Work to help others control theirs.

9. Realize that people are basically good and are trying to help themselves and everyone around them to improve their survival. As you work with people to acknowledge and strengthen that basic goodness, you’ll find more of this showing up in your and their lives.

10. Invest some of your time, if you can, in working for an actual charity or good-works organization in your city or neighborhood. Give of yourself freely, without expectation of reward or repayment.

11. Help others recover from their time in and around Scientology. Don’t force the issue, let them originate. Meanwhile, be cheerful and supportive of the good that they are and do.

12. Get on with your life. Find a project that fits your purpose and devote yourself to it. Start living for yourself and those around you with a zest.

- – - -

There are two principle points to these steps:

First, you are always going to get back what you give. If you are critical, antagonistic toward anything or anyone – you will get back that amount or more criticism or antagonism. By being charitable and understanding, supportive, you then get more understanding and help coming back to you. The more you help others, the more you receive help. Never expect the help to come back from where you invested it – that’s not necessarily the way this universe operates. But acknowledge help when it arrives and know that there’s more there – if you continue to give completely openhanded help freely around you.

Second, only compassion and understanding will allow those people in Scientology to discover the wide, wonderful world their cult has separated them from. Allow them to transition gradually. Help them as you can to live peaceful, tolerant lives – in harmony with everyone around them, not separate.

As you treat all your experiences in Scientology as learning ones, you can get the lessons and move on. Life has many, many lessons to be learned. Often, you are reminded about various situations you’ve encountered several times – because there are many different lessons to be learned from a single experience.

This world is not a perfect place, but perhaps we can make it more livable and joyous if we seek to live in peace with everyone – and help them to live peacefully as best we can. When you see someone trying to be different, separate from those around them, realize that this doesn’t make you or them wrong. They have a difference of opinion about how to live life. But you can know in your heart that what you put out into this universe is what you are going to get back.

So, be at peace, live at peace – and help others toward this goal. And then – if we get the bulk of this planet working toward that aim – we can make real progress toward a permanent peace on earth.