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April 18, 2005

HOW TO TALK TO A W Believer

I think people are interested in why a W Believer stays one and why some leave, so I thought I would talk to you about it.

I was a W Believer for years. I gave them over two hundred thousand dollars of my own money. In fact, until earlier this year I still considered myself a W Believer.

There is a lot of information that W Faith is destructive. Yet, as you may know, it is almost impossible to talk about these things with a dedicated W Believer. I hope to give you some clues.

You might wonder how I decided to leave. After all, my parents tried to talk me out of it. My sister tried to talk me out of it. My friends tried to talk me out of it. None succeeded.

I wouldn’t listen to anyone who tried to dissuade me from W Faith. I kept myself from reading critical news articles or viewing television shows. I never read critical books. I thought it was all lies anyway. I would have defended W Faith to the death.

So there are a few things you don’t want to do when taking to a W Believer.

Don’t talk to them about the weird stuff. Most W Believers don’t know about it and are trained in the idea that finding out about it too soon will kill them. So just leave that entirely alone. It may freak you out and you may want to share it, but they will think it is a personal attack.

Don’t tell them it is not a religion. A W Believer will instantly tune you out the moment you say that. After all they have subjective experience that is to them completely spiritual and religious in nature. To assert it isn’t is to be calling them a liar and denying their own experience.

W Believers invest a lot of their life and almost all their money in pursuit of the W Faith total freedom. I want you to understand that.

I felt that W Faith had saved my life. That I would otherwise have destroyed myself with drugs or suicide. I felt I had experienced personal insight into the nature of my own being through W Faith. It explained everything to me.

To tell me it isn’t a religion runs counter to my belief, but more importantly, it runs counter to my investment. If it is not a religion, then what did I do with my two hundred thousand dollars and my years of association and all those hours of watching Fox News and reading Drudge? I would have to admit that waste and I’m not going to do that just because you state, “It’s not a religion.”

Don’t tell them W was a con-man and a fraud and a cokehead and that almost nothing he said about himself was true. A W Believer can’t believe that because he has been told that such statements are all lies. That the documents that show these things are fabrications by a
shadowy conspiracy to destroy W and W Faith and thus deny people the total freedom W Faith offers.

You’re in a he-said she-said situation. In fact, without careful research you might be presenting false information that the church has put on the ‘net just so they can show their members how false it all is. So a W Believer will be sure you are now a tool of the conspiracy,
out to destroy W Faith. And they will not listen.

Don’t tell them W Faith doesn’t work. For a W Believer, it does work. They know it. They will be able to point out one or many times where they had a success or it helped them through something or they felt better about themselves. They may have past life memories that convince them of their spiritual nature. They can have experienced wonderful things.

But I’ve been doing some research. And one book is a book called “Hypnotism” written by G.H. Estabrooks in 1943. In chapter three he says: “There is a rule in Hypnotism that everything we get in a trance can also be obtained by means of the posthypnotic suggestion. Also that anything we find in either can be found in autosuggestion...”

So I am coming to believe that almost everything that occurs in W Faith that a W Believer experiences and believes in comes about as the self-suggested result of a kind of auto-hypnosis. Everything that seems to work or be positive is attributed to W Faith, and everything negative is assigned to personal failure or lack of understanding of W Faith. After which there is a long bout of study to correct the matter, which again is a kind of auto-hypnosis.

And any outside challenge to that carefully maintained trance will result in greater and greater resistance.

So how Do you talk to a W Believer?

First, you have to care. You have to care for them. Regardless of what you think about what they believe or do, you have to care.

Throw out any bigotry or intolerance you might have and be a caring person. Listen to them.

Assure them you only want good things for them. Give them a safe place to visit or come to.

Many times W Believers won’t leave the church even though they want to, if they have no safe place or people of unconditional trust to go to.

It is a huge personal event to leave W Faith. You have to somehow come to the decision you were wrong and all that money and time and investment is lost. You have to be willing to lose your friends, maybe even a husband or wife or children. Few people can do that when others are telling them they were wrong. And really, what a person has hypnotized himself into can only be undone by himself.

Tell them that if they want to come and see you, just call and you’ll pay their way. Say “come and see me.” If they call, send them an airplane ticket or go pick them up. And when they show up on your door step, don’t be surprised, be supportive. Don’t eagerly use their leaving to present them with stacks of information critical of W Faith. You can ask them about it, but they have a lot to think about. It can take some time. Give them space. Let them ask for information or let them use the internet to find out for themselves.

If they want to talk, get them talking about it. Have them tell you their experiences, good and bad. Talking helps, especially when the person listening is non-judgmental.

It is the internal conflicts I experienced within W Faith that broke the spell for me. So if I were now talking to a W Believer, I would talk to them about these things:

Get them to explain about the powers of an operating thetan, the higher levels in W Faith. And then ask them if they knew of people on those levels getting sick or getting cancer or dying or just leaving the church. Get them to think how the reality they observe differs from what is promised. Even for people who have been in W Faith for years. Tell them you are confused; if these magnificent powers existed, how then could critics of the church continue to write or
even to exist? Couldn’t a top level W Believer just wish them away?

Get them to describe the ideals of W Faith ethics and justice and how W Believers are supposed to be honest and straightforward. Find out if they know any W Believers who won’t pay back loans, who have trouble with paying their rent, who have done a lot of W Faith but still seem
shady or involved in schemes. If they have been around awhile, they will know some or will have heard of many such things.

Find out if they experienced the misapplication of W Faith justice themselves. Get them to talk about it.

See if they will talk about their feelings that it is “just them” having trouble, but that W Faith really is good. It is very common for people to go for decades wondering privately why they are not getting the promised gains from W Faith while outwardly defending it to the death.

These kinds of questions and getting them to think about what they experienced and observed as compared to what they are taught and led to believe are a key to breaking the kind of spell they are under.

So, I think that you should talk with a W Believer completely non-judgmentally. Get them to talk about what they have observed themselves in fellow W Believers, organizations, management and activities as compared to what they are given to believe from W’s writings and the promises of management. This way you open the door far enough that they will begin to read and compare the stories and experiences of ex-W Believers with their own.

Once that happens, you can help them. But don’t push it on them.

So how do you talk to a W Believer? With care and understanding. They found a reason to be in it. Give them the space and time and resources to find a reason to be out of it.

Read the original HOW TO TALK TO A SCIENTOLOGIST by Michael Tilse.

The changes I made were: replace Scientologist with W Believer; replace Scientology with W Faith; replace study and counseling with watching Fox News and reading Drudge; replace bigamist with cokehead. And a few cuts for brevity. But really that's all... explains a lot, doesn't it?

Posted by Jeff at April 18, 2005 06:00 AM