My vist to the Scientology Celebrity Center....

Over the summer, my friend and I planned to see a comedy show at the UCB theater on Franklin Ave in Los Angeles. However, we had about an hour to kill so we started walking around and noticed that directly across the street was the Scientology Celebrity Center. I have always driven past it so this was my first time getting a good look at it right in person. Since we had time to kill and were so curious about this huge building, we walked onto the property and looked around its surrounding gardens.

However shortly, a security guard on bicycle asked us to leave, but said we could go inside if we were interested in a tour of the place. We both thought, why not? We walked inside and it was magnificent and huge; it looked like an upscale, royal hotel.

We met with a tour guide who sat us down and told his life story. Basically, this guy was from New York and came to Los Angeles to become an actor. However, he had trouble finding work so he found a job at the Scientology Celebrity Center. After a few months of working here and studying scientology, he said his life improved so much. He got a raise and was making triple the amount he used to make, his IQ increased and he met his soul mate, who also worked at the center and after 2 months proposed to her. Perhaps, the strangest part was how he explained that after taking dianetics sessions, which I will explain later, he was able to fully recall his child birth….I am not joking. He had called up his mother even and recited the events. So once we heard his life story, which definitely made my friend and I very very skeptical about this person and scientology in general, he spent time talking about what scientology was. According to their website, scientology is:

The Scientology religion encompasses all life and provides practical solutions to every facet of existence. Its end goal is total spiritual freedom. More than a system of belief, Scientology is an applied religion that plays a vital role in both the lives of its congregation and the community at large. It brings spiritual enlightenment to man by way of religious practices that advance him to higher states of spiritual ability and understanding, while providing practical solutions to every facet of day-to-day living.

Although it was hard to take this guy seriously, the way he went about teaching us was very effective. He asked us to list some common preconceptions of scientology, in which he would then explain why it was incorrect.  So below, I will list some of the things my friend and I came up with, and how our tour guide proved them to be wrong, or kind of did.

1.     Myth #1: Scientology believes in Aliens.

Eh, kind of. Our tour guide explained that the only real reason people associate aliens with scientology are because the founder, L. Ron Hubbard was first a science fiction writer before he founded scientology. L. Ron Hubbard has written over 138 science fiction and adventure novels and other pulp fiction. I looked on line at the official scientology website and couldn’t find anything about aliens. However, when I looked at other websites, it described how there are secret teachings about aliens once one has achieved a higher level of initiation. Below is an excerpt from wikipedia about confidential materials:

Among these advanced teachings is the story of Xenu (sometimes Xemu), introduced as an alien ruler of the "Galactic Confederacy." According to this story, 75 million years ago Xenu brought billions of people to Earth in spacecraft resembling Douglas DC-8 airliners, stacked them around volcanoes and detonated hydrogen bombs in the volcanoes. The thetans then clustered together, stuck to the bodies of the living, and continue to do this today. Scientologists at advanced levels place considerable emphasis on isolating body thetans and neutralizing their ill effects. 

2.     Myth #2: Scientology is anti-medicine and psychology

True. Scientologists believe in dianetics, rather than pharmaceutical drugs and psychiatry. According to their website:

Dianetics comes from the Greek words dia (through) and nous (soul). Dianetics could be said to be what the soul is doing to the body. It provides answers to the fundamental riddles of the mind with a thoroughly validated method that increases sanity, intelligence, confidence and well-being. It gets rid of the unwanted sensations, unpleasant emotions and psychosomatic ills that block one’s life and happiness. Dianetics rests on basic principles that can be easily learned and applied by any reasonably intelligent person — as millions have. It is the route to a well, happy, high-IQ human being. Dianetics addresses the part of the mind that operates below the conscious level, exerting a hidden influence that causes you to react irrationally, say and do things that “aren’t you,” and have inexplicable emotions and ills that hold back intelligence and ability. It all resolves with Dianetics.

Our tour guide explained to us that they are anti-psychology and anti-psychiatry because in most causes it does more harm than good because people abuse pharmaceutical drugs and it is inhumane. The president of the church of scientology states:

What the Church opposes are brutal, inhumane psychiatric treatments. It does so for three principal reasons: 1) procedures such as electro-shock, drugs and lobotomy injure, maim and destroy people in the guise of help; 2) psychiatry is not a science and has no proven methods to justify the billions of dollars of government funds that are poured into it; and 3) psychiatric theories that man is a mere animal have been used to rationalize, for example, the wholesale slaughter of human beings in World Wars I and II.

3.     Myth #3: Scientology is a cult

Eh, it’s debatable. According to the official scientology website, scientology is a religion. It states:

Scientology meets all three criteria generally used by religious scholars when examining religions: (1) a belief in some Ultimate Reality, such as the Supreme Being or eternal truth that transcends the here and now of the secular world; (2) religious practices directed toward understanding, attaining or communicating with this Ultimate Reality; and (3) a community of believers who join together in pursuing the Ultimate Reality.

4.     Myth #4: Scientology believe in silent births

True. Scientologists believe in silent births because they want to create the most peaceful environment for a child to enter the world in. The tour guide explained how if a baby comes into this world hearing the doctor shouting “push, push” they will lead a chaotic life and will be always pushing him or herself.

Hanging out and talking to a tour guide at the Scientology Celebrity Center was perhaps one of the most interesting things I have ever done. Personally, it was hard to take everything he said seriously. However, the frightening part was that he was very convincing. Thus, I can see how other people who are more vulnerable or need guidance in their life would be susceptible to giving in to scientology.

How I ended up as a Native American Jew/ex-Mormon

Technically speaking, I am a Native American Jew/Mormon. And I’m pretty sure there aren’t too many of us out there. Native American Jew is one thing, but a Native American Mormon? Those are pretty rare. So how did this all happen? How did I manage to be a Navajo, raised Jewish with a Bat Mitzvah and with a huge family that resides in Utah? I’d say my mom is the one responsible. She is full Navajo and was born in Paige, Arizona. However, as the 7th child to a nomadic family, she was put up for adoption as a newborn. She was adopted by Ellis and Ora Larson, a husband and wife from St. George, Utah. Seems pretty normal so far, right? Well Mr. and Mrs. Larson were Mormon, thus before adopting my mother, already had seven children of their own. Even at the age of 50, Ora Larson was ready to adopt and bring into her home another child, my mother. There in Utah, she was raised in a Mormon family. However, at the age of 21, my mother was ready to get out of there, which I don’t blame her. St. George is basically a red dirt desert with too many Wal-Marts. At that age, she was way behind of the typical Mormon tendencies….getting married in the Temple and popping out babies. So she left for Los Angeles; she moved from a town of 10,000 to a metropolitan city of 3,000,000 full of booze, homosexuals, and Hollywood…terrifying any Mormon mother. In Los Angeles, she enrolled as an undergrad at UCLA (I apologize, but unfortunately my whole family is of Bruin descent) where she eventually met my father, a Jew from Redlands, California with only one sibling. At this point, my mother had abandoned her Mormon upbringing and was fine with raising me Jewish. I had the Bat Mitzvah, went to Hebrew school and went to services….only for the important holidays of course.

While I love my family in Utah, since that was the family was I raised with, I am, no offense, relieved to have skipped out on growing up Mormon. I have two cousins my age, who are both married already and pregnant with their first child and I just can’t imagine myself doing that any time soon. Mormons live a completely different lifestyle, one that is hard to understand by many.

Reconciling Faith and Politics? No thank you Obama

As the first African-American president of the United States, Barack Obama is naturally one of the most well known public figures in America. Obama, to some, may also be considered one of the most popular public intellectuals of our time. While some of this can be attributed to his respected views and speeches on current issues, a big chunk of his popularity as a public intellectual is due to the successful marketing and branding of his 2008 presidential campaign. Voting for Obama quickly became the “it” thing to do among new voters and wearing a shirt with his face on it became the new Hollywood trend. Regardless of the fabricated Obama hype, Barak Obama does remain a public intellectual worth listening to, even if you do not agree with everything he may say.

In June 2006, Obama, then senator of Illinois, delivered his “Call to Renewal” speech to an evangelical audience about his own personal religious beliefs and doubts, and about the role of faith in a pluralistic country. In the beginning of his speech, he discussed the problem America has with the finding the right balance of faith in politics:

For some time now, there has been plenty of talk among pundits and pollsters that the political divide in this country has fallen sharply along religious lines. Indeed, the single biggest "gap" in party affiliation among white Americans today … is between those who attend church regularly and those who don't.

This excerpt from Obama’s speech touches on one of the longest on-going issues in the history of the United States - the separation of Church and State, or in my eyes, the lack thereof. As Peter Beinart of The New Republic argues:

What these (and most other) liberals are saying is that the Christina Right sees politics through the prism of theology, and there’s something dangerous in that. And they’re right. It’s fine if religion influences your moral values. But, when you make public arguments, you have to ground them – as much as possible – in reason and evidence, things that are accessible to people of different religions, or no religion at all. …In a diverse democracy, there must be a common political language, and that language can’t be theological.

I myself am a strong supporter of keeping religion and politics separate from each other; partly because I am not religious, but also because I believe politics should not be based on the Bible or the word of God, and rather on facts and concrete evidence. In examining past and recent history, the line separating church and state has become blurred. One reason for this is pretty simple; the majority of people in the United States are religious, thus probably don’t oppose blurring the line of separation as much as I do. Another reason for the blurring of church and state is that most of our public leaders and public intellectuals have come from a religious background. This point is discussed by Stephen Mack in his article “The Wicked Paradox Redux Again.”

American democracy has always depended on public figures—and public intellectuals—whose work has been animated by strong faith. Billy Graham’s efforts to promote racial harmony during the 1950s, and Reinhold Neibuhr’s work for economic justice throughout his career come quickly to mind.

One of these public intellectuals that Stephen Mack describes is our current president. As a person of faith, it is not Obama’s mission to keep the Church and State completely separated. Instead he hopes to achieve a balance between faith and politics in our pluralistic and largely religious country. He explains:

And if we're going to do that then we first need to understand that Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians, and substantially more people in America believe in angels than they do in evolution.

However, as a politician and public intellectual advocating for a peaceful union of faith and politics, Obama is careful in choosing his words; he does not want to turn away supporters by being too radical with his message. He balances out his message by acknowledging the religious diversity in the United States:

Moreover, given the increasing diversity of America's population, the dangers of sectarianism have never been greater. Whatever we once were, we are no longer just a Christian nation; we are also a Jewish nation, a Muslim nation, a Buddhist nation, a Hindu nation, and a nation of nonbelievers.

In the end, while I do consider Barack Obama to be a public intellectual and I respect the majority of his views, he does not have my support on reconciling faith and politics. I understand that a majority of Americans are religious and thus do support bringing faith into politics, however many current issues we face today are the result of religion mixing with politics.