Day Three: Scientology

I'm slightly ashamed to admit that prior to today, my knowledge of Scientology came solely from Tom Cruise and South Park. So I made the trip to the local Church of Scientology today to see what all the buzz is about. I wasn't sure what to expect; the media portrays Scientologists as whacked out nutjobs. To be quite honest, after today, I'm not sure that I totally disagree with that assessment.

I watched part of a DVD entitled "Scientology: An Overview" with several members of the church. The entire DVD is about 3 hours long, so they gave me a copy of it to watch at home. One of these weekends I'll pop some popcorn and watch it all. The section that I watched was about human rights; apparently Scientologists have updated the basic human rights to make them more understandable. (As a side note, who knew that the right to play was a basic human right?) Although the DVD was somewhat entertaining, the part I saw did not tell me anything about Scientology. I needed more.

I was then given a brief tour of the church. It pretty much consisted of showing me all the various books, CDs, DVDs, etc, that they offer for sale. This is the number one reason why I'm skeptical of Scientology as a religion. Why should a person have to continually spend money to progress in their religious studies? And for that matter, why does the church insist on keeping their beliefs secret from the public?

After the tour, they hooked me up to an e-meter for a free stress test. An e-meter measures changes in the electrical resistance in the body, which Scientologists believe corresponds to changes in the reactive mind. I was told to think of a friend or family member. My mind wandered to the ex-boyfriend mentioned in my very first post, and the needle on the machine went nuts! I'm not sure if this was a legitimate reading, or if it had something to do with the auditor constantly fiddling with the knobs. The auditor then asked me what my biggest regret in my past was, and then proceeded to tell me how the solution to all my problems could be found in L. Ron Hubbard's book Dianetics (which I could buy for the low price of $24.00!)

I was approaching the 90 minute mark by this point, so I politely excused myself. I left my email address, so they're going to follow up with me in a week or two.


Oh, and my journey as a Buddhist started out rough today. A homeless woman asked me for some change and I lied and said I didn't have any. I immediately felt bad, but was too ashamed to turn around and give her some. Hopefully I can make up for it in the next few days by doing some random act of kindness.