Embark on a journey of spiritual discovery with us! Dive into a conversation where the realms of Independent Scientology meld with diverse psychological and spiritual disciplines. Our guests, Quentin Stroud and Lisa Burke, bring their unique backgrounds to the table as we dissect the synergies between Scientology and other practices. Quentin bridges the gap between his conservative Christian roots and spiritualism, while Lisa shares how her explorations beyond traditional Independent Scientology broadened her perspective.
Prepare to stretch the boundaries of your mind as we contemplate the philosophical and metaphysical. We tackle the Scientology axioms, drawing potent connections to ancient wisdom such as hermetic principles, and delve into the significance of a robust spiritual grounding. My own experiences, alongside Quentin and Lisa, offer a tapestry of insights, contrasting the effectiveness of approaches such as hermeticism and neuroscience with the constraints of Christianity, shadow work, and psychology.
As we wrap up our introspective odyssey, the spotlight turns to the shared tenets across various spiritual teachings, especially the art of living in the present. We knit parallels between Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" and Scientology's core principles, revealing the life-altering power of 'being here and being comfortable.' Through personal revelations, we underscore the value of self-determination and the transformative impact of facing life's tribulations head-on, enabling a life of heightened presence and purpose. Join us and discover how these diverse paths can converge toward a harmonious truth of mindfulness and empowerment.
Website: ao-gp.org
Be social and join US!: collegeofindependentscientology.com
Take our personality test and get a free evaluation: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RHJQ6DY
Embark on a journey of spiritual discovery with us! Dive into a conversation where the realms of Independent Scientology meld with diverse psychological and spiritual disciplines. Our guests, Quentin Stroud and Lisa Burke, bring their unique backgrounds to the table as we dissect the synergies between Scientology and other practices. Quentin bridges the gap between his conservative Christian roots and spiritualism, while Lisa shares how her explorations beyond traditional Independent Scientology broadened her perspective.
Prepare to stretch the boundaries of your mind as we contemplate the philosophical and metaphysical. We tackle the Scientology axioms, drawing potent connections to ancient wisdom such as hermetic principles, and delve into the significance of a robust spiritual grounding. My own experiences, alongside Quentin and Lisa, offer a tapestry of insights, contrasting the effectiveness of approaches such as hermeticism and neuroscience with the constraints of Christianity, shadow work, and psychology.
As we wrap up our introspective odyssey, the spotlight turns to the shared tenets across various spiritual teachings, especially the art of living in the present. We knit parallels between Eckhart Tolle's "The Power of Now" and Scientology's core principles, revealing the life-altering power of 'being here and being comfortable.' Through personal revelations, we underscore the value of self-determination and the transformative impact of facing life's tribulations head-on, enabling a life of heightened presence and purpose. Join us and discover how these diverse paths can converge toward a harmonious truth of mindfulness and empowerment.
Website: ao-gp.org
Be social and join US!: collegeofindependentscientology.com
Take our personality test and get a free evaluation: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/RHJQ6DY
Hey there, independent Scientologists. Discover a new perspective to your bridge by visiting aio-gporg. Get in session with remote auditing using the Theta Meter. Are you curious about where you stand? Head on over to aio-gporg now and take our free personality test. Join the growing group of independent Scientologists today.
Speaker 2:Hi and welcome to another independent Scientology outside of the Church podcast. This is going to be Season 7, Episode 5. We've taken a little seasonal break with Thanksgiving and Christmas. We wanted to come back before the end of the year and get one in before the new year and we've got a bunch of neat shows coming up.
Speaker 3:Happy new year.
Speaker 2:Happy new year to everybody listening to this. After the first January, it is December 29th and I am here with Quentin Stroud and Scientologist Lisa Burke. This one is going to be entitled Other Practices and Independent Scientology, without any more preamble. Quentin, you wanted to get rolling on this. I'm going to have a viewpoint, lisa is going to have a viewpoint, quentin is going to have a viewpoint. I'm the career independent Scientologist. That's my viewpoint. What did you say, quentin? What was your viewpoint?
Speaker 3:I am a career other.
Speaker 1:I'm a spiritualist yes.
Speaker 2:Okay, and.
Speaker 1:Lisa. For me it was basically just how I went from going as a Scientologist within the last four years and that was my stable date Taking a little bit of a break and exploring other areas, other practices, and how that has impacted me.
Speaker 2:All right, Quentin.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 2:What did you want to say? You had some stuff going there real quick.
Speaker 3:Well, as we were preparing for the show, we just got into a little chat. I totally saw where Scientologist was coming from, because she was basically saying that how her journey had been tapping into other ideas, other concepts, other ideologies when it comes to spirituality. And for me, I started off a very, very conservative Christian, so very conservative Christianity. The Bible was a part of my everyday experience, I kid you not.
Speaker 3:We had to read the devotional Bible every morning before we were going to school, so it was something that was definitely a part of what we were doing.
Speaker 3:And so, coming from that background, when I discovered Scientology at 19, at 19 years old, it was like a breath of fresh air, because I didn't really start to understand the Bible until well.
Speaker 3:That's not true. I started to understand the Bible a lot better when I started looking at it from a more spiritual perspective and less religious perspective. And then, when I found Scientology, it added that the bridge, and it added a route, it added a way, a path you know what I mean when before it was all about believe, believe, hallelujah, I believe. And then it went into, you know. And then it went into now, as you do this, this will be the result, and if you do that, that'll be the result, and you just keep going up the bridge. And that made a lot of sense to me, because most people are just, you know, walking around like a sheep without a shepherd, you know. And so that's what Scientology actually did for me. It brought my Christology, it brought my mysticism and spiritualism, and it brought all of that together and said now, this is what you can do with it. That's how it worked for me.
Speaker 1:Wow, yeah, yeah, I agree when it comes to the whole Christian thing because, as a lot of people know, I used to be a Christian when I was younger, almost well, I did write a blog post in which I felt that it was very cult-like in terms of you know the crazy sort of stuff that my family would. You know the expectations. You know, like things like Pokemon was not allowed in the place. Posters on the wall was like, yeah, posters on the wall was like you can have no smurfs, yeah All of that stuff, anything like that was.
Speaker 1:I mean, it got to a point where seashells because seashells are horned right they were like no, you can't even have that in the house, yeah.
Speaker 2:You're kidding.
Speaker 1:No, I'm 100%. Yeah, things like little frog figurines and owl figurines were seen as bad. I have no idea why. Because I mean God creates these creatures. If you believe in that, you know Christian thinking. So, yeah, it was pretty messed up. So for me I lost that religion like for years, and a part of me obviously had some resentment towards family and stuff because of it. But then later on, after I found Scientology knowing my background with Christianity and stuff like that, it really did broaden my understanding of all these concepts in the Bible and stuff to, like you said, less religious, more spiritual. So yeah, that was one of the things.
Speaker 1:But throughout my break I went into several different things some of them I have a list here like hermeticism, power of now, christianity, shadow work, psychology, neuroscience and all of that, and honestly there were things in it that made me kind of, I don't know, dispersed, you can say, because I had this base understanding of Scientology and I'm very thankful that I actually did Scientology first before going into all of this, because they did expand my understanding on these things. I was always using Scientology to understand these other principles and stuff, but ultimately in the end I felt a lot more dispersed, like my stable date and what? Scientology just wasn't there. And I think the reason why Scientology is such a stable date and for me, is because, well, you, you, it's operating off of the laws of the physical universe, and so you know, if, if you're like I mean, you don't get much more natural than who you are, as a being kind of thing, and I know that you know the Thayton is different from the physical universe, but it's still, you know, connected in some way.
Speaker 1:So yeah, that was just my experience. I'm not saying that you can't do other practices, but what I am saying is that if you do, be careful, because if you try and understand too many things, I feel like some people can cause some sort of adverse thing where it shakes your stable date. Now, that said, I didn't, I didn't fully explore everything, like for a long time, it was just maybe within the last year. So you know, that's got to be taken into consideration as well, whereas you, quentin, I think you've you've been doing this for years now you know, so you have 30-some-years, you really have a full understanding of it.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and what about you, jonathan? Because you, your journey is very different from both of ours.
Speaker 2:Well, I like vanilla. I don't want any sprinkles on it, I don't want any chocolate on it, I just want a vanilla bean ice cream.
Speaker 2:In the US it's Briars is my favorite vanilla ice cream Briars is the thing. So, and what I mean by that, you know, as an analogy, is I'm not real familiar with the Bible and biblical references. You've been really good about quoting particular references to me and it's interesting to me that when you mention things, I tend to correlate it with other things. In Scientology, a lot of them are similar and I think I've mentioned this in a couple other podcasts is Hubbard LRH was probably, or is, the best distiller of information, and Scientology is an amalgamation of many different things, and I would like to make the distinction that when we're talking about other practices, we're not necessarily talking about mixing things into independent Scientology.
Speaker 1:We're just talking about talking about well you know the things that exist Right, what, what?
Speaker 2:exists, and if you're, if you're, you're looking without there?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because LRH. I mean there's countless lectures that he mentions these. You know, the psychology talks about one thing, talks about Papa Freud you know all of these guys and course of whiskey. I mean, you know, when you get into data, the data evaluators course and things like that. So you know that he read these things. And who was it I was talking to? Oh, it's one of my, my PCs. Yesterday, as an example, the church banned and we mentioned this in another podcast the church banned God's of Eden by William Bramley, and they banned William Cooper's, bill Cooper's book Behold the Pale Horse, and these books the Church of Scientology or to Scientology, published Goldenrod that you were not allowed to read these books while online in the church.
Speaker 3:I love the Behold the Pale Horse. Yeah, yeah, so it, you know.
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't see reading other books as another practice. I wanted to bring that up to me because you're you're getting opposing viewpoints and, to Lisa's credit, she looked and then you raised your hands is like an erase the roof. When she mentioned it. Let's touch on her medicism, if we can for a minute, and how those, those, you guys find that they, they correlate. Lisa, what do you have to say on that?
Speaker 1:Okay, well, for me, when when the her medicism was kind of like the first one that I had, you know, went into after Scientology, and I think the reason why was because I found it so relatable, because her medicism, if you look at the seven laws, they are natural laws and so you know there's these things are causing effect in it, you know that kind of thing and it's all. It's all got to do with things that you'd find naturally in the physical universe and by understanding Scientology it just becomes so obvious and natural that you'd understand her medicism and the principles with it and there's no you know strict thing like you have to believe in a God or anything like that. You know one of the things I should actually pull up the seven laws, but one of the things that I remember.
Speaker 3:I got it right here too.
Speaker 1:Oh dear. Okay, One of the things that I remember is I think it's the first one where all his mind, everything is mental, and I think that that that kind of goes in with you know, in Scientology, like sort of I don't know simulation kind of thing, like the physical universe isn't real, it's a, it's a, it's an is-ness, but it's not an as-is-ness, like there's the third universe and then there's what's apparent in front of us.
Speaker 2:Right, Because you have for anything to persist. There's a lie behind it. So there's a constant altruism is going on to have the is-ness. Is that what you get out of it, Quinn?
Speaker 3:Well, and also that everything is postulated, everything is, everything is a postulated reality, and so that all his mind simply says that, according to the hermetic law, simply says that everything that you see, touch, may, taste, may, also everything over the physical universe is a condition of mind, of postulate, of consideration, and therefore, therefore, things can therefore be changed or altered by altering your postulate, by altering your mind on the matter, your consideration on the matter, and so and so, when a person, if a person were to study Scientology and really get the axioms right, really get the axiom I don't even say the first 10, right, when I read the axiom I was blown away because it really echoes, and I believe that Elevation Mom might have even looked into some of this stuff, like just really, like you said, distilled it down. But really get into a point where you understand how your postulates work, how everything is my, how everything is a, an unfoldment of postulates.
Speaker 1:It's perfect yeah.
Speaker 3:The law of mentalism.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and then there are others Just looking here.
Speaker 3:The one that's I'll say this, the one that stands out to me as it relates to you mentioned cause and effect. That every cause has an effect and every effect has a cause. Everything happens according to law. Chance is but a name for law not recognized. There are many planes of causation, but nothing escapes this law right, so that everything is a law of cause and effect. And so when you understand that that's the communication formula.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like the first.
Speaker 3:And that communication I was just saying this is great and that communication can, as is, any condition, right yeah, in any situation, with the right communication Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And I was going to say something, as you were talking about cause and effect thing, something that blew my mind and I'm still sort of like I can't get over, it is when I heard, when I first heard, that every problem has a solution. Has a problem, has a solution, and so it goes. And when I, when I looked at it and I really like thought, thought about it and discovered, okay, so you take you, you know, have a meal. Okay, so you had the meal, that's the solution. Then you've got the problem of cleaning up, and then, once you've cleaned it up, it's, it's solved. And then you know it just continues. And so with that, you know you can look at cause and effect as well.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and it goes down to the basics of every part of our lives. And so with for me, with my journey of spirituality, from Christianity to magic, mysticism, metaphysics to Scientology and I've been a Scientologist for the last 22 years and it's all it's. It's all saying what we know to be truth, yeah, in different ways. Now I do agree with you, lisa, when you said that if you're not, if you're not grounded or rooted in one way, one practice, and then you try to go and branch out to all these other things, it can be a very dispersive Experience. Yeah, it can really spread you kind of thin. So I totally agree with that. How was your experience with that? Like what? What did it feel like as you being having Scientology being your stable datum and then you kind of explore some of these other practices?
Speaker 1:Well, like I said, it was very dispersing, but there were some things that were better than others. So, for example, in my list right, I'm just going to pull it up. So hermeticism, like duct to water. Everything was fine with that. Neuroscience, for me, was also helpful because it dealt with science. So I do believe that you know there is a relationship between dopamine, serotonin and all of that stuff. That's just something that I think is true because of my own experiences. That said, I do not believe that you need to cure the brain with medication. I believe you can do it all naturally. Just do basic things like you know, walks nature, eat nutritious foods, that kind of thing. So you don't need to resort to going to, you know, psychotherapy and then getting all that crap.
Speaker 1:But some of the things that didn't work for me was obviously Christianity, shadow work and psychology, and the reason why they didn't work for me was because, well, firstly, christianity is other determined, so it's like you know God's going to fix your problems instead of you fixing it, depending on your definition, but for the general population that's the belief. Then you get to shadow work. Now shadow work can sort of seem helpful, and I'm just going to quickly explain what it is. It's basically well, how I found out about it was this book on TikTok. Yes, I'm mentioning TikTok again, but it was this book on TikTok and they recommended.
Speaker 1:You know, you get, you go through the book and you write down the stuff, the prompts that they give you, and it's all sort of questions that make you think about your inner child, makes you think about your past, things that you know, unhealed traumas and everything. Now, I didn't see the thing completely through, so maybe for some people it is a good thing, but what I got from it is that it just made me feel a bit like a victim. You know, because you're going through all those things, there's no way you can do that book without being in grief. You know, because it's sort of like a loss of having us and if people don't know in you know Scientology, for example, how to key themselves out again that pain can linger with you and keeps you at a low vibration. So I didn't really enjoy that.
Speaker 3:Can I jump in on the shadow work thing? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I totally agree with you.
Speaker 3:So what I tell people is that Dianetics is Scientology's version of shadow work, where you're going back on your track and you're confronting fully confronting these traumas.
Speaker 3:You're fully confronting these incidents and you confront them, not to. I don't want to feel this anymore. I don't like this feeling. Get it up. You might, you know, dramatize, but you're fully confronting them in order to integrate them. This is why when LRH says, when you clear an ingram, when it clears it's now refiled into your analytical mind. So when my father was murdered and the tragedy of my father's murder and all the ingrams that got locked in and happened with that whole thing, when I started doing Dianetics, I did it not to get rid of my father's murder and what I went through concerning that, because it was something that I needed to go through in order to heal, but I did Dianetics in order to refile it and to release that charge. So Dianetics really is shadow work.
Speaker 1:Yeah, with the exception of, I think, when you do shadow work by yourself, you know you're only just really scratching the surface and you need another terminal to be able to, you know, help you along through it. And it's still completely self-determined. It's just that you know you need the aid sometimes.
Speaker 3:That's totally true. I recommend. I recommend if a person wants to look into whatever Dianetics hands down. It helped me in so many ways. Right, it helped me in so many ways, and so and it was very rapid. The other thing is it was very rapid Going through some of these other practices. It can be lifelong, like you could be doing this stuff for your entire life Dianetics. We went in and within an hour or two hours that incident had no effect on me anymore. That felt really really good, and so you know, it just depends on how a person wants to approach a thing. But for those of you who are listening to this podcast and have experienced some of the things that we're talking about some of the Christianity and others and you say, hey, how does this fit into my journey? What I found is that Scientology and Dianetics cut through all of the spiritual red tape.
Speaker 3:You know, what I mean. It no longer made it a mystery and it made it into a certainty of how I could handle whatever needed to be handled, and that's what felt good. Now, mysticism, which I identify as a mystic Dianism, is about embracing the mystery, so this is a little bit different.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no for sure.
Speaker 1:I, looking at my list, I saw one, and this is something that I'm a little bit resistive about sharing, but I'm going to share it anyway, because, well, we're here now, so I actually yeah, I actually started doing a little bit of psychotherapy this year and you know, just having a comparison and stuff, and what I found now, just for the record, I didn't use any, any medication, it wasn't like that, it was just talk therapy. But what I found was that it was, it was just like going in circles, and I think that's how they keep a person going back the whole time is nothing ever changes. There's no goal, progress or anything like that. It's just letting you talk about your problems, evaluations about them, and then you know and let me add that something that I learned in Scientology, which was very good for me, was that even positive things can be an evaluation. So if somebody, if your auditor, for example, is you know agreeing with you that that trauma is real, that's not going to solve anything because instead of you know making you responsible and you know trying to raise you up, you're staying stuck in that victim mentality and your that person is trying to help you is validating that you have a right to feel that way.
Speaker 1:Now, I'm not about shaming victims at all. I understand it's a real thing. However, it is much better to empower people than keep them stuck in that pain, and I feel like with psychotherapy they try and keep you stuck in that pain Because, honestly, anybody that goes to you know a psychotherapist is basically a cash cow, because the system is designed to keep that you know money going. So anyway, with my experience it was just like it was just a constant, like you know, talk about your stuff and I didn't go a lot. I quickly realized this was not designed to make a person feel better, it was just to like almost like dynetics in a way, except with no goal was just to scratch the surface and then, like I said, keep you stuck in that loop. And that was my experience and I left shortly after joining.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, I'll say this I was in psychotherapy for after a very abusive relationship, I went to a psychotherapist for about a year and she was very, very good. She really, really helped me with coping mechanisms and things to help me get through those triggering moments and stuff like that, and when I could utilize some of those things, some of those things that helped me cope and get through it. Yeah, what I loved about LRH is that LRH made it very clear that we ain't just about coping.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we're about resolving those things that really keep you in your job. And so, just to give a quick story, I was in an abusive relationship. I was dating someone after the relationship and after a year of therapy and over a year of therapy, and one day we're in the bed watching television and something was funny I can't remember what it was, but we started kind of laughing and joking and tickling each other. So we tickled, tickled, tickled and my 2D was like you play too much, you play too much. And the way I heard it was exactly the way I heard it in my past relationship. And so I literally seized up like this, like my body clamped up, my hips were clenched, like this, like I was protecting my face yeah, I'm about to be hit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, Right. And I stayed that way for about I don't know 30 seconds, maybe a minute. And so the next thing I know I heard Q, q, what's going on? And I came to and I was like, oh shit, like I still got this junk effectively after a year or so of psychotherapy, the next year, 2006, I went straight into diabetics and handled that. It never had a problem since. Yeah, that abusive relationship, wow, and it was able to do it on an afternoon sitting in Piedmont Park in Atlanta, georgia, was able to do diabetics session and that one thing and it was actually it wasn't one thing, it was a chain yeah, I was in one abusive relationship this lifetime but it was a chain that went back, back, back and when I had with the third back and handle that incident, the whole chain blew. Yeah, had no idea it was something that affected me three lifetimes ago Anyway.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, that's really amazing, wow yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, great yeah.
Speaker 1:I was just going to say, and that's really something I feel like the stuff that I mentioned specifically, they, they're coping skills. So, yes, people are going to have a few wins on them, but they're not like dynetics and Scientology. Where it's, it's something that rid you of that stuff.
Speaker 3:Yeah 100% Now. Now, so talk to me about this, because you mentioned. I'm sorry, jonathan, you got something to say Well, I wanted to mention it.
Speaker 2:It's something that as I go on and my, my ARC, my KRC, improves with, with, with auditing and training and the more I audit people and everything.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I, that I see here here on earth we, you guys were talking about coping and a lot of the things that that you see on earth that are how shall I say this, there, it's as good as you're going to get on this planet, type of a thing, and it's as good as you're going to get is okay, cope. And then you do something with, with dynetics or Scientology, and you're rid of it in in our two hours time, a particular thing, especially with with dynetics, because you can use dynetics and practically anything. So it's it's as good as you're going to get. There are a lot of things that in dynetics and Scientology, not just it's not that the bar is raised, raised one notch, it's raised multiple notches to handle something, and it's one of these things that you don't see in other walks of life at all. It's just that's the best technology we have, type of a thing. That's all I wanted to say about that.
Speaker 3:No, I totally, I totally get that. And now this is where it goes deep for me. So, as Lisa was talking about Christianity as a religious practice, the hermetic laws as a way of philosophically looking at the world and the natural laws and things of that nature law of polarity, law of cosmic law, of vibrations, that kind of thing and looking at psychotherapy as a way of coping and trying to best you can with what you've got to get through your day, because you know shit happens and so people kind of go at it from different angles. There we go into magic and then we go into, like, actually, the manipulation and the shifting of energies and things of this nature. And everything LRH talks about in my opinion really teaches us how to use our ability as statins, our data, data perceptions and data abilities to make these things happen OT abilities I don't know what other words to call it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I definitely agree. I mean, we've got to look at it that we're not just part of the physical universe but there's a whole other universe that is out there, well, in us, whatever you want to call it. And so if you look at it in terms of that, then you know, I don't know an awful lot about magic, but I do know that we can maybe, you know, interpret certain things in one way, but it's really just a vast way of saying that you know, we're OT and we have these abilities and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:So whether you LRA sums it up, oh, sorry, no, no, you go ahead, it's okay.
Speaker 3:I was just reading here in the outline of therapy, lra sums it up, page six. He says that. So you say it in the second echelon thought is a static of unlimited capabilities, which has itself no wavelength, no space and no time. It is impinged upon the physical universe, which is space, time, energy and matter. The mission of thought is survival in the physical universe and in order to do this, it is affecting a conquest of the physical universe. That, right there. That, to me, is the crux of everything we're seeking to accomplish as spiritual beings having a human experience the impingement of our thought upon the physical universe in order to affect a conquest of the physical universe, so that we're no longer the effect of it but we're now calls of it, to whatever degree we can be or seek to be. So this is this to me. He calls it the second echelon of Scientology. The second echelon of Scientology is what I've been in. I'm rocking with that 100%.
Speaker 2:Well, and that's like I was saying earlier about the distillation of things, because when we talked about LRA's experience in the Love and Rockets episode and where a lot of this information comes from this is my personal opinion on it is that he looked at this stuff and he said I think there's more to this and there's more explanations in areas that sunlight hasn't been put on as to what these things are. I mean, you look at the Nautz technology on OT 3, 4, 5, and 7. It's one of these things where what you're dealing with in another term is you're looking at it. He looked at exorcism and went okay, well, the Catholic Church, they believe this, they do things with this, so there's something more to this. And then what he ended up dabbling in before he got going in Dianetics back in the early 40s is he said okay, there's definitely more to this.
Speaker 2:And then it came back up in 1951, 1952 in the Milestone I lectures, once they had the E-Meter and now you could prove this it wasn't just because somebody was dramatizing something from a particular entity that had latched onto them. And then he went in and looked at it some more on the OT levels and everything, another eight, 10 years type of a thing. So there's these little tags sticking out in all these different isms, andologies and entities and everything, and it's a culmination of all of these things that came up in different areas. And he looked at it for more of a scientific aspect instead of a philosophical or religious aspect, because Scientology is a science. It's a very methodical science, at least to me it is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, you know, when you're a physical universe device like the E-Meter, you know, because it's built on laws, you know that obviously means that it's scientific if you will, and then through that you go through the being and then the mind, and then obviously you get the spiritual stuff. And the reason why I feel like this is important is because, well, take me, for example, for a while, you know, before Scientology, I was in rough shape and things weren't going right. Ethics were out, all of that stuff. I didn't really even know much about ethics other than, well, you have to be good in order to go into heaven, kind of a thing. That was the limitation.
Speaker 1:But then I started, you know, having a more self-determined outlook on ethics and while that was happening and getting auditing and stuff, things were going right. And it wasn't just because I was making them go right in the physical universe, it was, you know, I'd be like, okay, I want to do this or I want that, and things were just aligned themselves, not necessarily by my power or physical efforts, but something greater than that. And I feel like that is sort of, if you will, a magical thing. You know, and that only really happens once you, you know, get up on the bridge and you take the time to, you know, get your ethics straight and stuff like that, obviously, again self-determined. Like I'm a big, like I always say, if you're going to do ethics, do it self-determined or don't do it at all, because as soon as it feels other determined somebody telling you what to do, it's going to put you out of effect and you don't want to be out of effect. Ethics is cause.
Speaker 3:Anyway, I'll go off a little bit of a tangent there. Well no, because LRH actually says it. When you talk about these miracles or these things magically or however out of the blue kind of happening, he actually says here. He says, when we say these things, we're talking about the second echelon of Scientology and in this echelon we can do many miraculous and wonderful things. We can do a lot of tricks.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool.
Speaker 3:I hadn't heard that one yet. And you said the sky's the limit here. Yeah, the sky's the limit. So I love that for me and my journey from ultra-conservative Christianity to more metaphysical, new-thought Christian, where now Jesus ain't coming to do nothing for you, right, jesus ain't coming back on the cloud, on Harley-Davidson.
Speaker 3:You get the idea that I am the unfoldment of that, christos, of the anointing, of the anointed one. I am the unfoldment of that, and so my journey, walking in Christ's footsteps, my journey, is to unfold as that which I know myself to be God's perfect idea of itself in me, and so I'm unfolding that. So I haven't had this idea of a personal Lord and Savior kind of concept for many, many years of my Christian journey, and because I always understood it as an allegorical narrative of unfoldment. The Christ story was an allegorical narrative of unfoldment, and so then, going from that and discovering magic and mysticism and kind of going within to figure out who I am, who am I, and all this, and then culminating all that into Scientology, it was like where have you been all my life, right? Yeah, it was like, yes, it took me 22 years to kind of find this, and then, when it all made sense. It all made sense. So that's what. That's what it's been for me.
Speaker 1:Excellent. Yeah, no, I completely agree. Like I said earlier, for me, you know, I mean, I also delved into a bit of Buddhism as well and I found that, you know, the principles were a bit loose but after learning about Scientology, like all of those things really expanded. So I totally feel you on that. Speaking of Buddhism, I wanted to touch on because I know you and I both like this the power of now and how that all plays into this whole thing. So I'm going to start out with my experience.
Speaker 1:So immediately upon, you know, reading the book, I loved it. I, after the first page, I was just like, yeah, this is really something to this and I was doing you know practices in it, like how he says you know you should just like, instead of going into meditation like full on for 30 minutes to an hour, you just do it through. You know your day to day life, like if you're standing waiting in a queue and and all of that stuff. And there were definitely moments where I was able to just be now and there were moments when I was able to observe the thinker. So, and for anybody hasn't read the book, basically there's there's you and then there's all your thoughts. So the thoughts are not you, and that's what he tries to get across.
Speaker 1:Obviously, there's several different elements in the book that he covers, but out of all of them I think those and also the, the way he says you should, you should try not or not even try not, you just don't resist things and surrender.
Speaker 1:And I love how he ends the book with saying that if the final question in the book is how do I know if I've surrendered?
Speaker 1:And he's like, well, when you no longer I have to ask the question, I thought that was just like a bum, bum, bum moment. So I really did enjoy it and I think if, if I can liken it to anything in Scientology, it would probably be being here and being comfortable, as you find, with you know TRs, but for whatever reason and I'm not bashing Scientology at all in this regard but I found the concept of being here and being comfortable a lot more difficult for me to grasp. I overthought it. I was overthinking it the whole time and we've got to remember that Elevage didn't write like a lot about the TRs. You know he didn't write an entire book about the TRs like in the Power of Now, but when you read the Power of Now. I think it can actually complement what you already know in Scientology or what you're about to discover in terms of the TRs. That being in the now was a lot easier for me to grasp than being here and being comfortable.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, I can understand that. I think that, by the way, the Book Power of Now was written by Eckhart Tolle as we were talking about it, but I think that, for me, when Eckhart Tolle would say stuff like life is now, and there is never a time when your life is not right now, right.
Speaker 3:Nor will there ever be Like understanding that. And then when LRH says I think he says something about life is now, well, I suppose that the Code of Honor and the code of honor, and he's like like, like, life is now Like so. So what, what we're seeing is this overlap or this amalgam of of spiritual truths that, however they've been disseminated, they've been disseminated for people where they are. And I say all the time, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And if that teacher starts out as the Bible, okay, let's see what that got. And if that teacher goes into true magic by Amber Cape, which is an amazing book, that it goes into that. And if it goes into Eckhart Tolle, the power of now, it goes into that.
Speaker 3:The Kabbalian, which is the hermetic principles, hermetic laws. And then if you go and pick up Dianetics, if you pick up some of LRH's higher books and the basics books, like that, that, that really is a very, in my opinion, a healthy journey of spirituality that again culminates with what we have as the best workable technology on planet Earth right now. That can really help people if they understand it. Clear your words, hello, yeah, as it will cause you not to want to look into it more, but definitely clear your words and then, lastly, use it. And if you use this text, if you use what LRH has given us, you can put this stuff into practice in your life and you can start to think with it, like, like like you were saying earlier, jonathan like when I say Bible, I think with Bible, I think with LRH, I think with this stuff, and then what ends up happening is I now am able to put these principles into action in my life, and that's what's made my life, in my opinion, to be very, very workable, because I now know what I'm doing as I'm doing it.
Speaker 3:It's not, it's not figure, figure, it's not you know. Oh, that triggered me. No, yeah, oh, I know what that is. I know exactly what that is. Nope, not on my watch. You're even a big need Angry. No, I'm choosing a different feeling, right?
Speaker 1:now? Yeah, absolutely, and yeah, it's definitely true that they sort of expand on each other. And well, you know if something is true in one area and it's true in another, especially if you know, like you know, with Scientology we're dealing with knowingness, not belief and if you know that that stuff is true, and then you take that and look at, you know the other practices, you're like, hey, but this is basically the same thing, just worded differently. So, for example, with being comfortable versus being in the now, with being here and being comfortable, it's the same thing. It's really just. In my understanding, being here was position in space instead of being in the now, position in time kind of a thing. But if you can just, I guess, be now and present and you know, get what I'm saying.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, we do say, we do say in Scientology come up to present time Present time yes, so like so there is a consideration, even in Scientology, of being in the now. This is a portrait of time.
Speaker 1:And I'm pretty sure that that all our age meant, you know, just be here in space, time, energy, whatever, and be comfortable. It's just my limited understanding at that point in time was, I guess, position in space Like, just, you know, ignore the itchies, ignore the fact that when you're looking at somebody your eyes are going squint, you know that kind of thing, oh my.
Speaker 3:God, you got it. This is so good. Look, because Eckhart Tolle says as soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, emphasizing the transformative power of living in the now. Come up to present time Exactly, and you be here and be comfortable. Tr0, 100%. You do TR0 in your life, no matter what's going on. You can confront it, you can face it and you can deal with it. And if something's turning on, you acknowledge it and you let it turn off. You let it flat now, yeah.
Speaker 3:It happens and imagine the kind of that tickle in your leg is going to tickle. Yeah, you let it go. And that hurt Don't resist more clear, and that hurt in your heart is going to turn off, but you don't respond to that, you don't succumb to that. Yeah, you stay in TR0 and you let it flatten out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, got it, and it's not powerful you could be if you could just be like that 100% all the time. Yes, you know, I mean a large part of a lot of people's problems, including my own, is emotional dysregulation. And so if you're being here and being comfortable and you're being in the now, you don't have all of those, you know, like if somebody has to tell you something and it's something that you don't necessarily like, instead of resisting, you just surrender and being like okay, that's your viewpoint. I do not have to lower my tone for that viewpoint. I can just be here, be comfortable with it, like in bull baiting, for example.
Speaker 3:Yes, Cool girl when you do those TRs and that joy like you could feel yourself wanting to slap somebody, yeah, and yet you got to keep your TRs. I mean, I have tested.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry. I have tested John's patience a lot in, you know, when he's auditing me and stuff and he's just got to sit there, take it and be like. You know his TRs are pretty good. I remember one day I was just like I never thought that I would ever want to leave an auditing chair, but that day I wanted to put down the cans. I was so furious with him because he was touching on something that I just didn't want to confront at all. But thankfully it all went smooth. I came back and sat down, sorry, and it all went okay. But you know, it would be miraculous if those kinds of things didn't affect us as much as they do, if we could just be in the now and that was it.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:Well, this is, I think, has been a really well-rounded discussion and, of course, you know, as you go back and watch and listen to all these other podcasts, you'll definitely see how ALGP and how independent Scientology really sticks to the truth and the tech as it is written, as LRH gave it to us. And so having the tech uncompromised, unfiltered if that makes sense, but having the techs in that way and the data in that way, it really helps us to know what we're talking about when we're doing the auditing, when we're in session, when we're doing your grades or you're doing your L11, which is what I'm walking with, like when you're in this stuff and you see how far you can go. It's quite an adventure and that's why, to me, scientology is the end, all to be all, at this point in my journey of self-discovery.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. And I just want to add that, mike, she had a realization while we were talking. And this is kind of proof in the pudding, because before we went on, I didn't really know how I was going to present this, because I was like conflicted between the different data. But then, as we were going along, because and here's the thing it was all in my head and so I didn't have a chance to have a terminal to speak about this, like there was a confusion about what's happening, what had happened, why this stuff didn't necessarily work.
Speaker 1:And then, by having a terminal or, in this case, two terminals, instead of it being my head, as obviously Scientology says, don't keep it in your head, talk to someone. Well, it doesn't say talk, but having a terminal is important. And the proof is that I had the realization that it's not that it's all practices that are confusing, it's just if there's just a certain type, and I'm going to say that that type is anything that makes you feel like a victim. So with psychotherapy, with shadow work, with Christianity, anything that's other determined. Because here's the thing, when you are in that victim mentality, it is completely other determined, you're not being self-determined. So yeah, there's my win for the day.
Speaker 3:I love it and I want to give that coat of honor thing that I mentioned earlier. I wanted to give it exactly as Larry wrote it A coat of honor number 11,. It says never regret yesterday. Life is in you today and you make your tomorrow.
Speaker 1:Yeah, larry, absolutely Wonderful.
Speaker 2:Well, on that note, folks, I hope this has been a enlightening compare and contrast on other practices compared to Scientology slash independent Scientology. We'll be back next week with some more podcasts on a lot of various subjects and we'll be plugging on through the month of January and February. We'll be back next week. Thanks for being here, namaste, and we love you. Bye-bye, bye, thanks.
Speaker 3:Thanks, good bye.