A Professional

I seem to be into quotes lately, so forgive me if you're sick of them. No, scratch that, tell me if you're sick of them and I'll figure out something else to write about. Otherwise, speak now or forever hold your peace. :)

Now, since I'm speaking of quotes, here's a great one about being a professional:

"A professional is somebody that can produce a high-quality product. A professional is not an audience, and when he views things, he looks for what's good in them and neglects the poor, low-grade things. The reason he does this is so he has an ideal scene. Without an ideal scene, he just operates off technical data and produces, artwise, a low-quality product and isn't professional. For instance, without an ideal scene, a director can never get a preconception of the shot.

"In viewing things that approach an ideal scene, the true professional works out how they did it and when presented with similar tasks of production can bring off things which approach an ideal scene in his own work." - L. Ron Hubbard

I really like the kind of quote that you can apply to your own life instantly. This is one such quote to me. I feel as if I can easily work at professionalism by always deciding on the ideal situation or scene and comparing what is currently there to that. In this way, I can make my product better, I can make my life better.

What do you guys think?

The Two Rules for Happy Living

I have always enjoyed the book Scientology A New Slant on Life. It's very simple and insightful . Two thing I've learned from it that I've found invaluable are the Two Rules for Happy Living. These are:

"1. Be able to experience anything.
"2. Cause only those things which others are able to experience easily."

That's pretty deep, huh? When I first read number 1, I was like "no way can I be able to experience anything. Who would want to do that anyway? Well, L. Ron Hubbard further explains:

"To be happy one only must be able to confront (which is to say, experience) those things that are. Unhappiness is only this: The inability to confront that which is. Hence 1. Be able to experience anything."

Well, that doesn't seem to bad. I can face the nitty gritty of how things are.

The second rule isn't so hard. I can understand that causing others to experience things they don't want to experience can upset them. In the book, L. Ron Hubbard puts it like this:

"All bad acts, then, are those acts which cannot be easily experienced on the target end."

That makes sense to me. In an extreme example, shooting a person is something they can't easily experience, thus it's not a good act to do. Not so extreme - you're mom isn't will to experience you sugar high, so when you take a cookie without permission, she's likely to get upset. You know you're not supposed to do it, so you don't feel so hot either.

So, try out the two rules and see if they make your life happier. Let me know how it goes.

Dianetics - What's it really all about?

I've been asked to do an overview of Dianetics, and I wanted to start by reiterating that I have written a few posts on this already so, if something doesn't make sense, please check them out or comment. Another great resource is the Dianetics website.

Here's what L. Ron Hubbard has to say about Dianetics:

"The history of Dianetics would be the history of a voyage of discovery, of an exploration into new and nearly uncharted realms, Terra Incognita, the Human Mind, a land which lies an inch behind your forehead."

I've spoken earlier about the mind and about engrams, but I haven't really talked a whole lot about how Dianetics works.

The basic idea is that you have two parts of your mind, the analyzer - which records your conscious thinking and memories and aides that thinking, and the reactive mind - which records unconscious memory. When some situation similar to a painful or unconscious experience you've had before comes up, you begin to think illogically, using your reactive or stimulus-response mind.

Dianetics allows you to look at those painful experiences and memories. It allows you to then move them from the reactive mind to the analytical mind, where they no longer cause you to react in a stimulus-response manner - rather, you respond rationally. Once you've completed this process, you have achieved the state of Clear. You can reason with your analytical mind without any unnecessary stimulus response reactions getting in your way.

There is a ton more data on this with great examples and real-life experiences in the Dianetics website, but that's the basic gist. Any questions?

What is squirrelling?

Most religions get altered in some way by someone. In Scientology, we have a word for this. It's called "squirrelling".

The Scientology definition of "squirrelling" is: "Squirrelling (going off into weird practices or altering Scientology) only comes about from noncomprehension."

It's interesting to look at, because you see this happening with other religions a lot. People interpret what others have said differently, the religions branch out and end up saying something very different from what the original said. It makes sense that this would all stem from someone not understanding why something is that way, then changing it.

Scientology and Life

I've had some accusatory comments (which I haven't posted - it's my blog, right?) about the quote regarding personal integrity. The quote is very simple and succinct:

"Nothing in Dianetics and Scientology is true for you unless you have observed it and it is true according to your observation. That is all." - L. Ron Hubbard

I've gotten comments saying that is a scapegoat for Scientologists, saying that we use it too freely. So, I thought I'd dredge up another quote about Scientology and life. I sincerely hope this helps people understand how Scientologists feel about their religion and about life in general:

"...But just because you know Scientology is no reason or license to stop living. You should be able to live much more fully. But you feel very free to use or not use exactly what you know, to use it as you think it ought to be used, to create the effect you want to create or just to create a random effect. That's a wide license, isn't it? The material is yours. Go ahead and take it." - L. Ron Hubbard

I think that's pretty clear. You can study the material of Dianetics and Scientology, then decide if you want to use it in life and how much you'd like to use it in life. Just like every other religion, you have the choice of when and how to use the information you've studied.

Any questions?

PS: Please, if you do have a question, frame it nicely and politely or it won't be published. If you accuse me or my religion of anything, I won't be publishing your comment. If you have a question about something that has nothing to do with this post, I'll try to answer it or give you a link that will answer it. I think these are pretty reasonable requests and most readers do the above naturally - but some don't and may wonder why they aren't getting their comments published.