Mississippi

The other day I had to catch a train in Jackson, MS. We had some time to kill and so we dropped by the Mississippi Art Museum and saw a traveling exhibit of art inspired by Hurricane Katrina.

I spent some time paying respect to the experience of the people portrayed in the photos. They were mostly character studies of people surrounded by their local devastation with a little text explaining the circumstances. I read story after story, then lo and behold, I saw mention of volunteers with "Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Scientologists and Jews being the largest groups that came to help". Wow - what an unexpected acknowledgment! I know I was there along with hundreds more Scientologists but there is never a mention of it in the mainstream press. This person who put together the display knew we were there.

Funny thing, I told my brother that I went, but he never had any interest in my experience or any questions about it. After he read that little text, he finally asked me about it. Seeing something in print written by somebody he has never met gave the experience validity.

Really Using Scientology

When I was younger I was stranded in Iran with no way to get back.   Thanks to a serendipitous encounter at a phone center,  my friend and I found ourselves on a truck convoy driving back to Europe through the Turkish mountains.

   

A fellow traveller was an Italian returning from a year in India with his Guru. He was very calm and peaceful, a shining example of a happy spirit.  That is, until a couple of days into the trip after spending time in a truck cab with a driver who was going through a psychotic break and would not stop talking.   The guy staggered out of the truck looking for a cigarette, pleading for one of us to swap trucks with him.  He had totally lost the serenity that he achieved during his year long quiet-time after getting smacked down by the physical universe.

I went through a slightly similar experience myself recently.  When I returned from a several month long Scientology retreat, I landed myself a huge pile o' bitter choleric hateful antagonism from an unexpected source.  At the time, I was also reading "Science of Survival" which goes into detail about the entanglement of life force with the physical universe.  Reading that book  gave me the understanding I needed to weather this situation and move on.

The thing about Scientology is that with auditing, you can get a bunch of spiritual improvement and feel great.  The training, though, is the life raft that will keep you afloat so you don't have to stagger around looking for someone to bail you out of bad situations.