Me, Before and After Scientology

In “Me, Before and After Scientology,” STAND (Scientologists Taking Action Against Discrimination) member Tina Phillips writes about Scientology and how it transformed her life.

This is my first blog post for STAND and I am proud to call myself a member.

If you’re like me, you get sucked into “Before and After” pictures and stories. Maybe it’s the weight loss program du jour or a closed-off storage room remade into an Architectural Digest-worthy man cave.

My personal makeover as a human being would also serve pretty well as a before-and-after story. Before: hippie, druggie, failing student, unstable, clueless, party girl. After: stable writer, mother, wife, volunteer, artist and thorough enjoyer of life!

Such was my transformation after discovering Scientology.

If my old high school friends could see me now, they just might not recognize me. I was the one, back in the day, who fully embraced being as much of a hippie as possible, and my main pursuit in all endeavors was to get high. Before I discovered drugs, I was a very good student and active in tons of ways, but then the drugs took center stage. Where once I was an energetic, curious, smart and always-on-the-go-kid, I became a lazy, unproductive, uncreative, dumbed-down pothead. And as I drifted my way through high school and college, I became more and more disconnected from friends, family, and life. But hey! I didn’t care, so it really wasn’t all that painful. (There is a sort of blissful numbness at the bottom, after all.)

Don’t get me wrong. I had very loving and caring parents who tried to guide me towards better decisions in life. I had many opportunities to change my ways. But nothing really caught my attention.

Then, by happenstance, a friend gave me the book Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health by L. Ron Hubbard. All he said was “It’s good.” It’s 491 pages. And I read it in 3 days because I couldn’t put it down. I remember having the thought that if even one fourth of this book was true, then I needed to find out about it.

So I did.

And I never looked back.

I’ve been in Scientology for over 44 years now. In retrospect, I can hardly believe the person I was before. Before Scientology, I exhibited bad behavior on nearly every front, with willful glee. I was bordering on petty criminality. I lived for myself and myself only.

The fact that I had such immediate excellent results from learning and using Scientology attests to its workability. No one person in the Church “made” me do anything. They only offered me the chance to look and make up my own mind—all I had to do was try it and see for myself if it worked.

I knew I was onto a new way of life, a new way of thinking about, observing, and participating in life that I had never experienced before.

Did it work? Oh yes, in spades. My very first day in Scientology, I started a communications course, and I woke up. I had no idea one could feel this good just by learning some simple truths about communicating. After all the shenanigans and stupid decisions I had made in my younger years, I still somehow came out the other side intact. Better than intact, I was rejuvenated. Because of Scientology.

I knew I was onto a new way of life, a new way of thinking, observing, and participating in life that I had never experienced before.

Today, I’m a proud Scientologist, writer, mother, wife, volunteer and lover of life. It’s not always a walk in the park. Living life, I’ve learned, is a process. There are always obstacles and hurdles when you have a purpose and strive to achieve it. Scientology has given me the zest, the desire, and the exact right tools to maneuver these roadblocks and thus win at the game of life. It is what I tried to achieve with drugs, but there is absolutely no comparison. My level of happiness continues to rise even to this day.

This in no way means that a person must be doing really lousy in life to benefit from Scientology. In fact, I know many people who were living very successful lives when they discovered Scientology. One is a businessman who owned his own company, lived in a very nice home with his wife and two kids. For him, he said he looked around and saw many people not succeeding and the reasons eluded them and him as well. He wanted to help.

Upon discovering Scientology for himself, he found the reasons why some people are held back in life and was able to then steer his friends toward prosperity.

Another was a nurse, obviously an occupation founded in helping others. But for her, she understood that physical health was only part of the answer. Consequently, she learned how to help others achieve spiritual “health” with the technology of Scientology.

If I could have a conversation with my old high school friends, I would just like them to know that I not only became successful in life, but that Scientology had much to do with it. Now I’m extroverted and interested in many people and things. I don’t live in a narrow band of tolerance anymore; rather, I’ve come to enjoy life on such a wider scale.

Scientology has given me the key to embracing life as an exciting adventure, not something to endure or hide from.

Priceless.