Embark with me on a deeply personal voyage through my Scientology upbringing, as I unravel my childhood narratives beginning at the whimsical age of two and a half. Together with Quenton Stroud, we share intimate insights into growing up in a world where past life memories are embraced and Scientology's ethical frameworks guide one's life. From enduring the sting of being the odd one out at school to encountering teachers who made startling claims of past connections with my father, this episode is an open book on the complexities of a life interwoven with the fabric of Scientology.
Navigating the choppy seas of adolescence, Quenton and I reflect on how the sense of being an outsider during those tumultuous high school years was tempered by the sanctuary we found in the arts and the creation of our power groups. We discuss the significant role that early interactions with adults, who saw us as their equals, played in carving our paths and nurturing our growth. L. Ron Hubbard's philosophies on happiness and control are dissected against the backdrop of our quest for identity, illustrating just how deeply these teachings were ingrained in our search for a place where we truly belonged.
As the curtain closes on our exchange, we dive into the transformative effects of Scientology training on our formative educational and entrepreneurial exploits. Highlighting the merits of instilling independent Scientology principles in children, we recount anecdotes of our own offspring thriving under this unique blend of spiritual and practical wisdom. Lastly, Quenton and I touch on the art of keeping employees motivated, underscoring the undeniable power of acknowledgment and the art of respectful dialogue. This episode is not just a podcast; it's a heart-to-heart conversation promising to return with more enlightening narratives.
Website: ao-gp.org
Be social and join US!: collegeofindependentscientology.com
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Embark with me on a deeply personal voyage through my Scientology upbringing, as I unravel my childhood narratives beginning at the whimsical age of two and a half. Together with Quenton Stroud, we share intimate insights into growing up in a world where past life memories are embraced and Scientology's ethical frameworks guide one's life. From enduring the sting of being the odd one out at school to encountering teachers who made startling claims of past connections with my father, this episode is an open book on the complexities of a life interwoven with the fabric of Scientology.
Navigating the choppy seas of adolescence, Quenton and I reflect on how the sense of being an outsider during those tumultuous high school years was tempered by the sanctuary we found in the arts and the creation of our power groups. We discuss the significant role that early interactions with adults, who saw us as their equals, played in carving our paths and nurturing our growth. L. Ron Hubbard's philosophies on happiness and control are dissected against the backdrop of our quest for identity, illustrating just how deeply these teachings were ingrained in our search for a place where we truly belonged.
As the curtain closes on our exchange, we dive into the transformative effects of Scientology training on our formative educational and entrepreneurial exploits. Highlighting the merits of instilling independent Scientology principles in children, we recount anecdotes of our own offspring thriving under this unique blend of spiritual and practical wisdom. Lastly, Quenton and I touch on the art of keeping employees motivated, underscoring the undeniable power of acknowledgment and the art of respectful dialogue. This episode is not just a podcast; it's a heart-to-heart conversation promising to return with more enlightening narratives.
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
Hi and welcome to another Scientology Outside of the Church podcast. We're going to start doing a little bit shorter format as of today, with 30 minute podcast episodes. We hope you enjoy it. This one is going to be season seven, episode 11. 12, 12, 12, episode 12. I'm stuck in yesterday. Come at the present time, Jonathan. And this one is going to be raising your children in Scientology. They should peak some interest, so why wouldn't you? Why would you raise your children as independent Scientologists?
Speaker 2:Well, that's because Scientology at the subject. That's what I'm telling. Well, right, correct you technically were raised in Scientology.
Speaker 1:Right yeah, I was raised as a Scientologist from the age of two and a half.
Speaker 2:OK, got it. Well, tell me about that. What was that like?
Speaker 1:Well, my dad got a ticket at the local community college, maple Woods Community College in Kansas City North, for a lecture and he went to the lecture and went and did a communications course Love the lecture, and that was that and then started doing book one and then learned his Academy levels and then standard Dianetics, then his Academy levels. We moved from Kansas City to Los Angeles, los Angeles, kansas City, kansas City, los Angeles, los Angeles to Kansas City between the years of 1975 and 1978. As a two and a half year old I was something that was about three and a half I told my dad some past life things that had occurred for me and he acknowledged me. He didn't invalidate me, he didn't evaluate for me, kept his auditor's code in and made notes of it so that he could tell me later what I said when I got older. It could have been a better childhood. There was a lot of restimulation for him on being audited past clear and some of it got taken out on me, I think.
Speaker 1:Did I have an awful childhood? No, no, by any means. It was a far better childhood. Childhood I had three square meals, hot meals, you know, good clothes, braces, but the thing that was missing for me is that he never got any admin training. I never heard the word ethics conditions once until I was 18 and I was getting trained at flag. I didn't hear the word PTS or PTS-ness until 1984, 1985, when he wrote a disconnect letter to my aunt His mom's sister, obviously and then my dad got overstimulated on something one night and ambulance came to get him and he was taken to the hospital and I guess by modern definitions outside of Scientology, it was a panic attack.
Speaker 1:He got keyed in on something and then shortly thereafter went to LA to get some PTS hand links and things like that because of this aunt that was psychotic when she needed to be. From my standpoint as an auditor now, but you know, being raised as a Scientology child, the thing for me that stands out the most, beyond anything my parents did or didn't do, is my experience with others, my age, and that was one of those things where I was consistently the black sheep. There's a song by the Canadian you mean in your peer groups?
Speaker 1:Yeah, in my peer group there's a song by the Canadian progressive rock group, rush, rush being my favorite band, you know, peer wrote a song named Subdivisions that talks about being pushed with all of the things that the peer pressure and everything in the peer group, and that was the song that really defined things for me, because it was, I mean, just such a great wordsmith In the basement bars, in the backs of cars be cool or be cast out. I was not cool and I saw things differently. I believed in past lives. I knew about past lives. I spoke to other people about Scientology. I had my college history teacher in high school harass me about being a Scientologist several times.
Speaker 1:Now here's an interesting thing, and you're not going to believe this my freshman year social studies teacher came up to me. This happened twice and this is both my freshman years because I was very over it about being a Scientologist. He came up to me and he said tell your dad. I said hi, and that I remember him from past lives, just out of the blue. Okay, just out of the blue. How are we? I was a freshman in high school, okay, and I? You know, I don't know how it came up, but I mean, I wasn't. I don't even remember mentioning it in. I think it was. What is it civil? What is it? What do they call it? You know it was history class, basically Social studies.
Speaker 2:Yeah. Civic social studies yeah yeah.
Speaker 1:And then this is even stranger, and then my Mr Cobb, my algebra, algebra. One teacher who was also the high school football coach and tough as nails and didn't put up with any bullshit in his class and everything, and I mean you know, just bam, tone 40, you know really good intention, you know he had that. He had that what I call the black woman tone 40, you know, when he got onto somebody else he just shook you to your soul kind of thing. You know, even though they weren't talking to you, it was just bam.
Speaker 1:Yeah and you know, and you thought, god damn, I will never, ever play football. So he grabs me, I'm stepping out of the room and and he says you know, I want you to tell your dad, I remember him and we were in Egypt together, and that I said hi.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And what did you?
Speaker 2:do like like with these. Were these people just in your school, or were they also Scientologists in your school?
Speaker 1:No, they weren't, neither one of them nor Scientologists, that's the thing. Neither one of them went to the org in Kansas City I don't even remember mentioning anything to him about it, I don't and he just grabbed me, grabbed me by the shoulder, real nice and everything, and told me to tell my dad this. And my dad said really Wow, and I'm like, well, that was it. Yeah, so those were, those were the two strange things that happened that had nothing to do. I mean, you know, there's there's no way to explain it, right, but you know, in high school I was always given all kinds of shit and, you know, teased on the bus and and all that stuff and because of my viewpoints, and I never, ever, ever felt like I fit in. I was a musician and I had, I took art, a lot of art classes and and all that stuff, and I basically finished high school in my my by the end of my junior year I had enough credits that I was pretty much a professional teacher's assistant my senior year.
Speaker 1:So, and I had a full-time job and all that stuff. But it was very unpleasant for me because there wasn't anybody with my reality, except these two teachers, that after my freshman year I never saw them again, you know, and I didn't. They were in different parts of the high school and stuff like that and I didn't go to the org until 1984, summer of 1984.
Speaker 1:And there was one guy running the org. After the whole Mission Holders Conference destroyed the mission there and then they turned it into the organist. One guy was the only one working there and it was on Main Street and I mentioned another podcast.
Speaker 1:He had to shoot the prostitutes off the front steps with a broom and stuff like that. But that was the primary thing is that there was no reality with anybody that I went to school with. When I was in elementary and Hollywood. I had the opportunity to go to Apple School, which is a Scientology based, you know, study. Okay, never got to go there, it was too much. I was supposed to have another teacher who was going to work with me after school and everything like that. She got in a car accident. She was going to teach me ceramics and teach me play pottery wheels and piano and all this stuff never happened.
Speaker 1:And I remember with my dad he was getting standard dynetics at the time and I, from a gal who owned the old borax King's house is a mansion up in the Hollywood Hills and I've looked it up online and everything and yeah, it's still there and I would sit outside and play around in a grotto that was similar to what the Playboy mansion has, but it was. It was all defunct and everything. And I met these really cool people who treated me like an adult. They didn't treat me like a kid and I was in second grade at the time.
Speaker 1:So the sum of all of this is basically it wasn't any fun not to have anybody else with similar realities, but it was far from and I didn't have any brothers and sisters, so it was far from awful. But you know, either want to have brothers and sisters who have the same viewpoint or you want to be around other people of your own peer group that you can live with. Because there was, there wasn't any ARC and the age difference between my parents and the things that my dad told me I mean it was a lot, a lot of it was was real, whole tracky and stuff like that. But he never I mean it was never on the OT level, so he never told me anything about that or anything. So that's my story.
Speaker 2:Well, I got it. He's very interested. Very interested because I think, you know, even though I technically wasn't raised Scientologists, I was a past life Scientologist and I forgot to mention that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I and I came with some stuff, okay. And so when you mentioned about being a black sheep, for me I was never one to want to fit in, like that's just kind of wasn't my thing, like I didn't want to fit in. I never saw the cool factor. I created, interestingly enough, my own groups and I remember, even when I was very young, when I would go into the school, I knew I wasn't going to be the popular here because they had, like Cameron Gallimore and these people they never listen to this podcast, but there are people who clearly I knew going in, these are the popular here and I'm from Alabama, so I grew up in the, you know, conservative South or whatever. And so what I would do is I would create my own groups and we ended up having our own condition of power and we and we called it that we didn't call it the condition of power, we just call it power, like we had our own power right. And it was really really interesting how I made that. Every school I went to, I made that kind of that kind of decision that I'm going to create my own group and we're going to be at power like that. And so I actually positioned this one girl in my group to run for like a class president or whatever, whatever, and like I was like no, you're going to run for class president and you're going to get elected and you're like. I actually just like moved her into this station because I wanted one of my people in power. So for me it was again being raised Jehovah's Witness. But having the knowledge that I had, I was very, very tone 40 in the way I showed up and I was very, I was very much like that.
Speaker 2:Lrh has something to say in a child. Dianetics was published in 1951. And he talks about how you know you're, you enjoy life and you're happy. Let me read it to you. It says you're well and enjoyed life because you aren't owned. Your American forefathers' false slavery twice, 1776 and 1861. You couldn't enjoy life if you were shepherded and owned. You'd revolt and if your revolt was quenched you turn into a subversive. And that's what you make out of your children when you own, manage and control them. Right, so I was that. So I was very, very managed and very controlled in the conservative South Christian household and so I became quite subversive revolt. He said that that's what your children will become a subversive revolt? Yeah, and that's pretty common.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely, it was, absolutely. Oh, it is. And one of my favorite you talked about I don't know much about Rush the band, but one of my favorite in high school, middle school and high school was Marilyn Manson and I really, really loved that song 1996 by Marilyn Manson because it talked about like the whole like Columbine thing and he was speaking against how they were trying to blame him for all that stuff. And disposable teens that was another disposable teens, two really good songs by him. And I'm saying all this to say is that growing up in a religion that is very regimented, it can put you in a position where you don't feel like you're free. Now, for me, I always felt free, even though my mother tried to create that sense of control. I always felt free to do right, right and free to be. It wasn't until I would say probably ninth grade, maybe kind of around where you were is when my I really started to step into my OT abilities and my theta percepts and stuff like that and it really became a thing for me that I was able to do things and be perceived of things that other people weren't, hadn't been rehabilitated on Right and so Growing up that way, when I became a parent later on, I knew that I wanted to give my son the ability to choose number one with giving him what I knew. So what I would do is I would weave into his education Scientology. So of course he would go to school on the weekends. He would have course one course period on the weekends, and so that's fine. And then during the week, I think we had a course on Wednesday and Saturday. No, wednesday and Sunday was a course period and so he would go to course Wednesday evening and then on Sunday and he would get his Scientology in and then we would have him like, tell us how he would apply it. Okay, so what you learn, how can you apply that, or whatever. So in the course of a very short period of time he was able to really, really improve in school. So his grades improved dramatically.
Speaker 2:I was extremely proud when he was able to graduate high school, because before he had been so blown from course when it comes to schooling that he didn't want to finish school. He was just like I don't want to do this anymore, I want to get my GED, I just want to get out, get my GED and move on, kind of thing. And so it was really good that he was able to kind of get himself in a much better place. So I feel that growing up with the way I did, with what I knew as a past life Scientologist, and then coming back to give the same opportunity to my son to use some tech in his life, it was very, very good for him. Communication courses, those kinds of things really worked. We use self analysis a lot and I think LA said it in Chattanooga. He said that's all I can tell you right now. Self analysis is your best pattern of processing to use on a child. Only you ask him the questions.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And you'll have a happy house. So we did use self analysis a lot and it was pretty good stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a really good gradient for kids. I remember my dad doing touch assists on me. I got scalded with hot water once one winter doing something in the garage locationals. He taught me how to change the shape. I know this is gonna sound strange to people, but it's true. Change the shape of clouds. He would say, look at that cloud there. And he would say, okay, I'm gonna turn it into Mickey Mouse. And he'd turn it into Mickey Mouse and I'm like how do you do that.
Speaker 1:And he says, well, you just postulate it because it doesn't have a lot of density and it's water vapor. And I was really into weather and meteorology and stuff like that and so we would go out and we would do that together as a father and son and stuff and make designs in the clouds and that was one of those OT I mean some people would say OT abilities, but it's just something that they can do is they can manipulate water vapor and turn it into shapes and stuff like that. So that was my first introduction into changing the physical universe, type of a thing this is so crazy.
Speaker 2:Hold on a second. Let me tell you why this is crazy, because I never heard anybody else say that. So what we used to do is we used to blot out the sun. So I would make Micah I said I'll make Micah go out, and he would go out to the house and he was to come inside in the air conditioner and I would say, go outside and just blot out the sun there. And so he would be outside, he would raise his hands, he would be moving the clouds and he would blot out the sun and he and his friends would go play football or something like that in the backyard. And so this was a real thing. Like we tried our kids to manipulate weather.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know that's one of the things that you can do, and I think that the underlying theme on this is you know there's a lot of good to be had with it, but you need to be educated on it, and there's a lot of. I mean, child Dynetics has all kinds of stuff for kids and learning touch assists and locationals and word clearing. I mean, you know, my dad taught me word clearing and things like that, which helped in school tremendously. I mean, there's so many different pieces of tech that you can. You can teach a kid, but you know, understanding, affinity, reality, communication, knowledge, responsibility, old KRC triangle, all these basic things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, acknowledgements, trs that was one of the big, big, oh yes, and it really made a big difference. I remember when I went to middle school and I was, I was in speech class Was the only a plus class I ever ever got as a grade because I had done the calm course and my TRs were in and I would go up and I would speak and and and I would. You know it was. It was basically everything you needed to do was just using the training regiments and Scientology's communications course and that that really made a big difference with me, with people, and I would go out and mow.
Speaker 1:I started going out mowing lawns at the age of seven for hire, yep, because I had the confront to go out and knock on people's doors and say, can I mow your lawn for $10? And I have a weed eater and I'll do that for for the $10 that you have a weed eater, you know, and that's where I got into sales and you know I mean so you know you start them early and you can really give kids a leg up on this whole thing. I don't have any any bad experiences being raised as a Scientologist and now an independent Scientologist at all, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I put my kids in an independent Scientology to and then they, while we were still in the church, they went to applied applied scholastic schools and Clearwater and everything, and all but two of them GED out because they didn't want to go to non Scientology schools.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll just take the GED, like yours did, and boom they were done two years before they needed to be done and off joining the workforce or starting their own businesses. You know, like poker professionally, I mean, you know, being nurses is just that kind of thing. So you know, I'm very proud of all, all of my kids artists. So you know, it's never been a bad experience for me and I would highly recommend it. But get some training so that you can help them out just like you did.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, I'll say for me, preparing my son for the world with this kind of technology, spiritual technology, it's very important, in my opinion, to do so because it's one thing and we had, you know, a faith practice, and then we had a philosophical practice, applied religious philosophy, and so having him understand our faith practice and then having him use Scientology you know what I mean it was really, really a good, you know kind of one to punch, because I wanted him to have a strong belief system in who he was as a person, as a spiritual being, the whole bit.
Speaker 2:But I also wanted him to have the know, how you know, to go throughout this work of day world, to go throughout life, to go through these things. So when you mentioned about the cutting grass, my son did the same thing cutting grass and shoveling snow. We went to Home Depot and bought him a lawn mower and we bought him the electric kind so he wouldn't have to keep buying gas, right, and so we were really smart and so we bought him the electric kind. So he would do. He had a long extension cord and then he would go to people's houses with the extension cord wrapped around his shoulder. That's what. That's what that's what?
Speaker 1:yeah, that's what I did. That's what I did. I had a black and Decker electric lawn mower and that's what I started with.
Speaker 2:And I used the black and Decker orange.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I used the shit out of that thing until until you know it didn't work anymore, which was 10 years later. And with that cord I'd have two of those 20 foot cords, one on each shoulder. That's really funny, yeah.
Speaker 2:So he would go. So one weekend he went out and he made about $240. We were living in Maryland and he was cutting grass and then he worked the entire weekend. Like I didn't even see him the entire weekend. He would come home and shower, go to bed or whatever, but by and large he was working and he made $240 that weekend and he felt like a king.
Speaker 2:He felt so able, he felt so productive, he was like he just felt really really good. And then what we did was we posted it on social media and people started then sending him money. Like he was really really like just so affluent, like he was so doing what he needed to do to create for himself. And so when he turned 13, so he started cutting around 11, when he turned 13, he had money saved up. He was doing really really well for himself as a young person and I told him no more Christmas gifts at 13. No more Christmas gifts. Instead of Christmas gifts, you get Christmas trips. And so instead of buying him things, we started giving him experiences for Christmas, and that's very valuable, especially at that age.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. So what when? When he would come back from winter break to school and his friends, look, oh, I got a new police station game and I got a new sweater or whatever. He was like oh yeah, I just came back from, you know, dominican Republic and he would have pictures like these Dominican girls and stuff like that and his friends.
Speaker 2:But are you kidding me? You know, and so I'm saying that, that if you do it right this is my thought on this if you do it right, you can really raise some very you can have. You can give children some very, very good experiences. If you do it wrong, where they feel like they're controlled and managed and Manipulated into stuff or whatever, whatever it can create some some very bad, bad control right, the bad control factor it can create some very bad experiences. I believe that we did it right.
Speaker 2:I believe that you know giving them the tech that they need in order to do well in life is very important and, as independent Scientologists, you don't have to put them through the ringer of Of being in the corporate Modality right, the corporate church. You don't have to put them to the ringer with that. You can give them some very, very good tech and make it so that we do. We do like the like in the Academy. They have the points. In the Academy we had the same thing. So you get your points and your points count towards your, your allowance for the week. So Show me that your up stat and you'll get an up stat Experience, you know yeah, that's that's.
Speaker 1:Another thing is the the the up stat and the down stat thing and in productivity and work ethic and everything was something that was Instilled in me through through Scientology policy.
Speaker 1:That was one thing I did omit, and and man, it made a huge difference for me in my life because you know it was always, always. You know, be honest, always deliver what's promised, always. You know Service, service, service, exchange and abundance, exchange, that type of a thing. And if you instill that in a, in a child and get them to understand that you know a good product is a good product, you, you, you make good things, whatever, that is that's invaluable. It really yeah. Totally this is good.
Speaker 2:So I'll just, I'll just say this and I'll be done. I'll encourage you at those who are listening and and interested in introducing your children to something that can work for them, improving their life condition. Whether it be mental health. And you want to run them on self-analysis, get yeah, go go into the, go into the college, get the book self-analysis, like whether you want to work them, run them on self-analysis.
Speaker 2:Whether you want to do some diabetics, if they've already experienced some trauma and some stuff, if you want to run them on diabetics, go ahead and start to run them on diabetics. They can take it. They're right, yeah, I can take it. And and then the TRs and objectives Give them some TRs, get them to know how to be in present time, so you know how they they diagnosed in kids left and right with ADHD and all this junk. Like, get them some TRs in and they can really be there and and do what they need to do. And the last thing I'll say, as my advice, is to Teach them about ethics, ethics and conditions, like, give them what they need and they can work with it.
Speaker 1:Yep, and and the. The other thing is is the the responsibility of leaders policy letter and the takeaway from that. It's about Simone Bolivar. One of the things that I was taught was is is you have to give your children something to do, because if you don't, the game will become get you and, and so I was always given something to do and I always had chores and, and you know, I that moved into. Okay, what game do I want to play? Oh, I can Milan's, or I can do this, or you know All these different things.
Speaker 1:Computers I got a computer in 1982, learned to program All that stuff and, and you know, you got to give your kids something to do and make it positive. Take those phones away from them. Don't get them started. Don't give them a phone in the first place. Get them to be extroverted, get them to look at the world instead of be introverted and and and buy into the all of this, this crazy social stuff. What's going on? That would be my, my, my best example is keep, keep them busy, keep them productive, reward them when they're up statistics and Extrovert them always and be in communication, acknowledge them and treat them like, like adults and don't invalidate and don't evaluate them. That's that's. Those are my key takeaways for me, but I love it. We're a little over 30 minutes, so we're gonna bid you folks adieu. We hope you enjoyed the shorter format and we will see you tomorrow with another podcast. So for Quentin Stroud and myself, have a great day, namaste, and we love you Bye, bye.
Speaker 2:Peace you.