The Hardest Lie

My First Success Story

This post is in response to the January 16, 2023 opinion poll. Be sure to get your votes in on this week’s poll.

Being in Scientology teaches a person that they bite down hard on their truth. It only takes a matter of days worth of indoctrination in Scientology ways to learn that you’ve entered backwards world. The things that brought you to the doorstep are the things that will eventually harm you the worst.

I entered the doors of Scientology as a seeker. I also believed that it would help me to help others. Both of these things are hot button items to suck people in. But, realistically, a person could come into Scientology saying “I want to make my fingernails grow faster.” They would be told “Scientology can help you with that.” Anyone wanting to explore Scientology for any reason will always be told Scientology is the cure. It’s a lie.

No matter why a person goes into Scientology, they won’t find it there. What they will find is how to lie. The first lie is the hardest. If a person entering Scientology can get past that lie, it’s a slippery slope. Either they become expert liars. Or they leave.

But let me explain how it starts…

I got into Scientology in a Mission. That’s the way Hubbard said it was supposed to happen. Missions were the small feeder outlets. They were more geared to the public. When a new person like me came in, they were treated like gold. They were one of a few. They were immediately swept into the bosom of the few caring souls there. It was impossible for a naive young person like me to not feel as though they were something special.

From my first step in the door, they made me feel welcome. I felt like the missing piece to their group puzzle. It was impossible not to let that go to my head. For the first time in my life, every person around me thought I was special. Well, everyone around me told me I was special. I believed they were telling the truth.

A small cluster of handsome young men about my age were very persuasive. They convinced me it was in my best interest to plop down the money to pay for the Communications Course. It was not much in 1975. I think I paid $5.00 for that first course.

The course was supposed to, per their literature, “be able to communicate easily with anyone on any subject.” That’s a lot to ask of such an inexpensive course. That, too, convinced me there must be something to all this Scientology stuff.

So I started the course. I had to read Keeping Scientology Working at the beginning of the first course I took. I sort of glossed over it in my mind. It took several more readings of it before I realized just how seriously Hubbard took himself. I should have read it more carefully the first time.

I wrote an entire post on what the Communications Course entails on June, 2024. If you aren’t a former Scientologist, please read that post first. Otherwise, the next part of this probably won’t make sense to you.

Within a day or two after I started the Communications Course, I began to doubt it would work. How does sitting and staring at someone help you communicate? How does allowing someone to say things to you until you no longer react aid communication? And let’s not even talk about the whole yelling at ashtrays part.

But of course I kept going. And pretty soon I was through. But, in Scientology, you are never, ever through.

As soon as I finished the course, my supervisor gave me a routing form. On it was a list of things I needed to do.

HCOPL 10 July, 1965 states “When despatch [sic] and body routing charts laid down by policy are carefully followed, the Org will function. When They are not, it won’t.” This means that when a student finishes a course in Scientology, they must complete an exact set of steps. To use a Scientology term, they follow a robotic procedure at the end of each course.

The student takes a test, which they must pass at 100%. Then they go to the examiner. The examiner is a person who sits behind an e-meter. After each course or auditing action, each person goes to the examiner and picks up the cans. It is a requirement that there is a floating needle. After that, a person has to write a success story.

The routing form continues to the body registrar and yes, they are called body regges, not regges. If the person doesn’t immediately pay for their next bridge action, they are sent back to the supervisor. They must also sign up for a new action or, per Hubbard, there was something wrong on the prior one. What a trap! There is no way to escape once you start. So on and in the person goes.

But back to the hardest lie. This was the hardest lie I told in Scientology. I need to differentiate this because it just means that I had the hardest time telling it. It doesn’t by any stretch of the imagination mean that it was the biggest lie I ever told.

After the examiner told me my needle was floating, I was told I needed to write a success story. A success story in Scientology is odd because it must be glowingly nonspecific. Just like a person getting auditing can’t talk about their “case,” a person getting training can’t talk about their training. That’s right. Even what you learn is a secret. This is true even if you are on the same course as everyone else in the room.

I sat down to write my success story. By then, I had only been there a short time. But I was aware that the success story had to be glowing or I would be back on course. The problem is I was not glowing. I really didn’t feel I’d gained much, if anything. I couldn’t communicate a whole lot better. All I could see I had really gain was how not to react to someone being mean to me. And I wasn’t sure I liked that I could do that.

But I had choices:

• Write a glowing success story
• Go back on course
• Walk out the door and never come back – losing people I believed were my friends

I was just needy enough that I sat down and wrote a glowing success story. I talked about how much more confident I was. About how much brighter I felt. And I don’t remember what else. Then I tied it up in a nice bow with a smiley face on the bottom. I had become a good Scientologist. I had learned how to lie with enthusiasm.

Then I pasted a smile on my face and headed for the body reg. What was I thinking?