Beyond Belief (16 page)

I was wary around them both. They were Wogs, so I never quite knew what I should or shouldn’t say to them. At the Ranch, we practiced our
shore story
, which was what we were supposed to tell Wogs if they asked us questions about what we were up to. The shore story originated when the Sea Org was on ships and members didn’t want their whereabouts known; they would tell a shore story. Rather than saying we were Cadets training to be in the Sea Org, our shore story was supposed to be we were going to a private school called the Castile Canyon Ranch School. My great-grandparents didn’t do too much prodding and probing, though. They were used to their family being involved in the Church, especially in the Sea Org—after all, David Miscavige was their grandson.

During their visit, my great-grandparents announced that they wanted to take me to Disney World, but I didn’t want to be alone with them. I didn’t know them that well. When I told Dad about my apprehension during a phone call, he got angry with me and told me I had to go; otherwise it would be bad PR, or out PR, for the family. This may have been the first time I had been ordered to spend time with non-Scientologists. My upbringing had succeeded in making me very apprehensive about Wogs, even Wogs as generous and well-intentioned as my great grandparents were. They weren’t about to slander Scientology. However, when my mother saw me crying, she told me that Sharni could come, so my dilemma was solved.

M
Y
C
LAY
T
ABLE CONTINUED FOR WEEKS.
T
HE DEEPER INTO THE
Clay Table processes we got, the more we were supposed to have a realization called an “end phenomena,” basically a win, a floating needle, a very good intention, but I just couldn’t get it. Every auditing level in Scientology had a specific end phenomena, or ability gained, that you were supposed to achieve before moving up to the next step. After weeks, though, I hadn’t reached the end phenomena, and I was getting really sick of it. I even dreamed what it might be and tried writing the answer down as a win, but as often I guessed, it was never right.

Finally, I was told that I might have gone past it. I wasn’t exactly sure how this could have happened, but I was even more confused when they confirmed I had indeed gone by it and that the oversight had been on their part for not realizing it. It was unclear how or when my end phenomena had happened, but as a result, I was now finished with the Clay Table auditing.

As much as I wasn’t sure I’d experienced the end phenomena, I wasn’t about to stop them from moving me forward; after all, I wanted to get to the good stuff ahead. Since coming to Flag I’d been encountering more and more people who were further along in their studies, and some of them were quickly becoming inspiring role models for me. I wanted what they had—more knowledge, more proximity to total freedom so if the people in charge of the Key to Life said I’d experienced my end phenomena, well then, I must have. All that was left was to attest to the processing action, which meant going to the examiner and signing off on my Clay Table. Thank God, my needle floated, and that was the end.

I then was assigned to audit another girl on her Clay Table. She was about four years older than I and was so extremely slow at building her representations that it took everything I had to keep from falling asleep. I would sit at her Clay Table for five hours at a time, waiting for her to finish. I wasn’t allowed to move to the next step until she finally attested.

The next step was improving our understanding of small, common words. We used a five-inch-thick dictionary written by LRH that contained any common word you could think of, words like “it,” “the,” “yes,” “no,” “up,” “of,” “in,” and “out.” I had to begin with the first word, read the first definition of that word aloud, then explain to Diane, in my own words, what it meant. I would have to use it in sentences according to that first definition until I fully understood it. Then, Diane would proceed to the next two definitions and so on, until we’d often done more than twenty definitions for each tiny common word. Once we’d moved through all the definitions of a word, we progressed on to that word’s etymologies and idioms as well. Tiny words had dozens of idioms that had to be cleared with the same procedure as the definitions. It was mind-numbing at points, and I tried to get through it quickly, but of course, there were meter checks and spot checks in this course room, too.

Our progress was slow, and Diane and I didn’t always get along. She was older, smarter, and quicker than I was. I got bored easily and really struggled to pay attention. How many hours could I spend on the word “of” before going out of my mind? When we got frustrated or upset, we were told to take a walk, so we would go walking all the time. Eventually, though, we got through all the words.

The next step in the Key to Life course had a textbook as thick as the last.
New Grammar
was another nightmare. Because LRH believed that the misunderstood word was at the root of all stupidity and wrongdoing, he wanted to be sure that the meanings of even the smallest and most common words were clarified. He also wanted to stress grammar, since it gave another level of understanding to the English language, which was something we used every day and thus the key to making us truly literate.

It was very hard to understand the material, especially while trying to read it aloud perfectly. While it might have been okay for the older students, it was just too complicated for me. Other than Diane, I was younger than everyone else on the course by about five years, making it even more challenging. I often quietly reread the material later, because every few pages there would be a test to make sure we understood everything. In the end,
New Grammar
took us several months. I don’t know how I got through these tests, but I did.

The last step on the course was called the Factors. People talked about this next step as though it imparted some amazing information on how we had all come to this planet. I was curious, because I had been hearing about it for a while now. When we opened
The Factors
, we found pretty pictures of clouds and sunrises, leaves and mountains, lightning, and other natural phenomena. On the last page, there was a quote that read, “Humbly tendered as a gift to man from L. Ron Hubbard.”

As cryptic and mysterious as the book was, it felt anticlimactic. I had been hoping for a blow-by-blow of how we had come to be, but instead it said things like, “Before the beginning was a Cause and the entire purpose of the Cause was the creation of effect.” It was the kind of winding language with which I was all too familiar. As always, I felt as though I had missed something and, as always, I didn’t ask, or else I would just be told to find my misunderstood word.

I
N SPITE OF ALL THE MONOTONY IN THE COURSE WORK,
I
FOUND
myself becoming more and more entranced by the Sea Org life—not by the classes themselves, but by the lives that everyone around me seemed to have.

I’d grown used to the perks that came with having a mother in an executive position. I ate lunch with Mom at the WB, while Diane ate at the Elks Building, the location of the dining services for the non-execs, which, apparently, was gross. Every Saturday morning my Mom got a half day off, once or twice a full day, and we did things I had never done before—we went jet-skiing with Tom, Jenny, and Allison, or to a nature park to swim with the manatees.

My mom had a special hairdresser for her highlights and haircuts, and sometimes I’d go with her, but only to watch. Once, she paid for me to have a manicure at a local spa when she was getting a wax. I didn’t even know that highlights, waxes, and manicures were standards when it came to feminine beauty. I had previously never talked about this kind of stuff with my mother. The whole process was incredibly foreign to me—the idea of taking care of yourself like this would have been seen as incredibly selfish on the Ranch, but here at Flag, I didn’t question it. It seemed like something my mother deserved, and I looked up to her as a Sea Org role model. She was an outstanding example of just how far you could go.

The longer I stayed at Flag, the more attractive it became and the more I felt my enthusiasm for the Sea Org and Scientology growing. The highlights were the graduations, which took place on Friday nights in the auditorium of the Fort Harrison Hotel. The whole Flag base attended graduations every week, so the hall was always packed. People used this opportunity to share their wins, which were directly related to the courses the graduates had taken or the auditing they had received while at Flag. Each win was really just a personal gain; it could vary from something as small as feeling better to something as big as a miracle. After graduation, there was food being served by roving waiters and, each week, different executives flew in from the Int Base to be guest speakers. Sometimes it would be my father, so we would have the next morning to hang out together. Other times the speaker would be another high-ranking Scientology executive and, occasionally, even my uncle Dave.

In many ways, hearing these speakers amplified all the positive things I’d been feeling about the Sea Org since my first trip to Clearwater. Living like my mom in the Sea Org seemed to be a great dream and I wanted to become just like her. Then I’d see people like my father speaking in front of these massive audiences with the full spectacle of the religion on display, and I’d believe even more strongly that my future was in the Church.

I was especially moved at the annual Scientology events like Auditors Day, the International Association of Scientologists event, and the anniversary of the Maiden Voyage of the
Freewinds
. There would be thousands of Scientologists in attendance, and top executives would take to the podium to share videos of Scientology’s work in different parts of the world, even as far as Asia and Russia. The videos often highlighted people from the various countries speaking about what Scientology had done for them. People shared wins about everything from being cured of cancer to walking after being paralyzed, while our audience thousands of miles away sat enraptured, hanging on each word. Afterward, everyone would leap to their feet, cheer, and go wild, and I, too, was energized by the enthusiasm. I didn’t understand every word that people shared about their experiences, but the impact that the entire scene had on me was undeniable. A flush of goose bumps would sweep across my body and my ears would strain to take in the pulse of the chants of “hip, hip, hooray” to LRH around me; this was the group in its grandest form, with the power of being a Scientologist on full display.

At these events, Uncle Dave or another top exec would show graphs of how all the international Scientology statistics were on the rise, higher than ever before. The stats would chart things like “well done auditing hours” or “number of books sold to individuals.” Uncle Dave or one of his people would always give a motivational speech about how Scientology was making inroads around the world and how some governments were even embracing it.

When Diane and I graduated from Key to Life, it was finally time for me to share a win of my own with the class. I was already insecure and quiet, and coupled with the fact that my win was barely worthy of attention, I wasn’t very confident. When Diane presented hers it was long and lovely. I, on the other hand, was a deer in headlights. I had a better understanding of the small common words, and so I felt a more in-depth understanding of what people were saying to me and of the things I read. “I had fun,” I mumbled with such awkwardness that I ran out of the room, which only made it more embarrassing. That Friday night, at the graduation ceremony, I was too shy to go onto the stage to get my certificate, which was something everyone usually did.

Unfortunately, finishing my course meant that my time in Clearwater was almost over. My new friends from all over the world invited me to visit them at their homes, an absolutely tantalizing possibility for me. Because my mom had been around the world on her various projects, I knew it might be possible for me, too, someday. I was going to miss my friends; even Diane and I had grown close, despite the personal competition I had had with her.

More so than ever before, I found myself truly believing in the power of the Church. After months of listening to wins and experiencing Sea Org life vicariously, I’d gradually bought into Scientology in a way that I never had before. For the first time, I wasn’t thinking about my frustrations with Thursday Basics and condition formulas or how much I didn’t like doing deck work. Now I was just thinking about what I could achieve if I allowed Scientology to help me. I’d always believed in it, but I’d never understood its power or the place that it could have in my life. Suddenly, I felt like I could see my purpose, my future service to the Sea Org, and the reason for my dedication all unfolding right in front of me. Being in the crowd every Friday, I found it hard not to feel that I was a part of something special, something that was going to change all mankind.

C
HAPTER
E
LEVEN

BACK TO THE DRUDGERY

A
FTER GRADUATION,
I
STAYED AN EXTRA FEW WEEKS IN
C
LEARWATER,
then flew back to California with my mother. She had business at Int, and I went back to the Ranch. I’d been away for months, and it gave me a strange sensation to return. It was really hard to go back to the deck work and the drudgery after my taste of freedom at Flag. The experiences stayed with me, and instead of sinking into a depressive rut, I found myself optimistic about what the future held.

My friends at the Ranch were certainly a big part of keeping my spirits high. When I was with my friends, I rarely thought about my family. Naomi, one of my best friends, had a pretty rebellious attitude. She always listened to a punk-music radio station, even though the Church considered a lot of punk bands too explicit, specifically the Sex Pistols. LRH had even mentioned the band by name as being a bad influence on children in one of his advices.