"I don’t really do New Year’s resolutions because I don’t think you should have to wait until December to start working on how to change yourself. I think if you’ve got a problem, you need to fix it now."
- Clay Aiken

"Now there are more overweight people in America than average-weight people. So overweight people are now average. Which means you've met your New Year's resolution."
- Jay Leno

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life.
It turns what we have into enough, and
more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos
to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn
a meal into a feast, a house into a home,
a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes
sense of our past, brings peace for today,
and creates a vision for tomorrow."

~ Melody Beattie

"You have not lived a perfect day, even though you have earned your money, unless you have done something for someone who will never be able to repay you." - Ruth Smeltzer

"1. Is it possible that your attitudes about scientology are shaped by your
trust and faith in the founder and in his benevolence and genius?

2. If so, is it possible that your faith and trust are
unwarranted--undeserved?

3. Why is it in scientology that you can 'think' all you want, but you're
strictly prohibited from *discussing* the pros and cons of the tech? As you
know, that would be verbal tech and would be punished. Why? In fact didn't
hubbard so much as say in 'keeping scientology working' that ordinary people
were incapable of coming up with a workable technology and that henceforth he
would have a monopoly on all such thinking?

4. If your religion really encourages independent thought, why is it that the
subject of ethics is more or less reduced to a series of a dozen or so
formulas, arranged from worst to best? Why is 'doubt,' which would be a key
component of thinking for yourself, toward the bottom of the scale--a 'lower'
condition? And why do the 'formulas' for 'rising' out of doubt to normalcy
involve quite a bit of duress?

5. What happens if you 'think' scientology really doesn't produce an
accumulation of gains toward a state of OT? Can you go to the org and air your
thoughts?

6. If scientology encourages thinking for yourself, why is there such a
pervasive emphasis on 'doing what ron said,' on '100% standard application of
the tech,' in auditing, organizationally and in life? Isn't this saying,
'there's no need to think for yourself, I've done all the important
thinking for you?'

7. Why are you effectively *required* to write success stories right after
every auditing action and course. Why isn't this voluntary? And why aren't
there meanungful follow ups on how people are doing after the euphoria has
worn of, with an honest tabulation of long term results? Why can't you
publish a 'thoughtful' skepticism-story in scientology? Would everyones gains
evaporate?

8. Why ARE so many former members so critical of scientology? If it's the
result of misapplication of the tech, then why is it so hard to apply the
tech? And where ARE the 'uniformly spectacular results' touted by
scientology--or are these just temporary states of euphoria?"

-John

"scientology used to pride itself back when it was still a secret cult with big
big secrets and could cruise about with its private investigators and punk
lawyers scaring people with all its big, powerful OT sekrits. that was when
they were able to scare off all the media and crush the IRS, because they had
their enemy's secrets and their enemies did not have theirs. they could play
poker when their enemies' hands were face-up and they kept theirs under the
table. they could be all grim and menacing and MIB-ish with their briefcases
full of secrets, their OT death stares and their list of people you didn't want
to end up like, people like gerry armstrong or paulette cooper or jon atack,
bankrupt litigation-hounded paranoid people who looked over their backs and
waited for the next attack.

it is thanks to these people and others like them that we have had these secrets
exposed. the Big Bad OT secret. and it is friggin' SPACE COOTIES. SPACE
COOTIES AND XENU! BWAHAHAHAHA! that's the BIG OT SEKRIT? what a joke! what a
bunch a pitiful LOON-BALLS!

now when facing scientologists, and their hired minions, it is hard to be
worried about them or all that terrified by some pitiful FOOL covered in SPACE
COOTIES! it is because of this that "facing a scientologist" is much rarer.
usually their hind end is in evidence as they scamper off to hide under a tarp
or crouch back down under their anonymous remailers. after all, would you be
seen in public with goddamn SPACE COOTIES crawling all over you? i wouldn't.
i'd be embarrassed that people would bust out laughing at me, pointing and
giggling. "now johnny don't laugh at that guy with all the [snort] haha. . .
[stifled snicker] space. . .haha. . .SPACE COOTIES!" everyone else in line to
buy kools or whatever would turn around, to see what was up. the polite ones
might hide their laughter behind their hand. the meaner ruder ones might
outright guffaw at the poor freakish idiot walking around with SPACE COOTIES.
some big bubba-type guy might even ask "are you a SCIENTOLOGIST? just
wondering, only SCIENTOLOGISTS have such a bad case of SPACE COOTIES!"
-Rob Clark

"people will object to being in rooms with scientologist lawyers. they will
demand the scienos quit flicking SPACE COOTIES on them. this might even be used
to hold off the FBI in the stand-off. the Feds would sure be worried and
frightened, the scienos could just threaten to dump a big load of SPACE COOTIES
on them. "big, nasty SPACE COOTIES, too!" one would yell from hiding under a
blue tarp. (what is it with UFO cults and hiding bodies under colored cloths?)

even judges will eventually get into the act. ordering that all SPACE COOTIES
be removed from the court. bailiffs would have to be trained in the THETAN HAND
TECHNIQUE. this is when you kind of make like a jerking-off motion with a
disembodied THETAN HAND--don't laugh, this is the closest SEA OGRES get to sex--
until you "blow off" these gross clusters of BODY THETANS and SPACE COOTIES
and so on, maybe some stray dandruff too.

they have been in scientology
so long, that their very brains are clogged up with SPACE COOTIES and SPACE
COOTIES party-trash. it is tough to think straight when SPACE COOTIES are
dumping beer cans in your spleen and emptying ashtrays on your medulla
oblongata."

Rob Clark

"We'd like to see you in a better personal condition too.
Do you really think exorcising your space cooties will get you
marvy OT powers? It won't! Ask the ex-Scientology OTs here!
It's a fraud. Dropping out of a fraudulent cult with really
stupid teachings, so stupid they have to hide them, will
really better your personal condition overnight! " Pope Charles

"Oh no! I have SPACE COOTIES! BTS! Clusters! Help me Elron, help me!
Here's my wallet Elron, take it all but
GET RID OF THE GODDAMNED SPACE COOTIES!"
"Get them off of me! Get them off of me!" - Pope Charles

"There's been a discussion recently on alt.religion.scientology about
what the most famous person in Scientology lore, Lord Xenu, actually
looked like. Somebody, who should know better, wrote that he was a
galactic Emperor, not one of those bug-like guys. Actually, Xenu was
both, a galactic despot with ET features. Although his eyes are not
musciform, they're definitely not wogoid®, as wogs® now appear
seventy-five million years after Xenu really goofed the floof.
Probably it's most accurate to call his eyes, which really are a
distinctive facet of his appearance, lemurid or lemurine.

The best picture of Xenu is undoubtedly the one Time Magazine
published on the cover of its "Person of the Billennium" issue, which
on this occasion is a story that Time got absolutely right."
- Gerry Armstrong

http://www.gerryarmstrong.org/50grand/f ... enium.html

I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief.
~Gerry Spence

"Freedom encompasses the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the
heretical, the unwelcome
and provocative". "Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having."


-- Lord Justice Sedley

"The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and judiciary, in the same hands, whether of one, a few, or many, and whether hereditary, self-appointed, or elective, may justly be pronounced the very definition of tyranny." - James Madison

"Speak kindly of your enemies, because remember you made them."
- Shakespeare

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

- Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Cowardice asks the question, Is it safe?
Expediency asks the question, Is it politic?
Vanity asks the question, Is it popular?
But conscience asks the question, Is it right?


And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither
safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because his
conscience tells him that it is right." - Martin Luther King