Scientology in a cow pie

by Jim Wilbur

A person I knew, who had quit Scientology before I did, had an interesting simile for explaining her involvement in the organization. She had been a reg and although she claimed to have quit she still was very connected and involved because of her family relationships and her personal spiritual beliefs.

This was her basic simile: She felt that Scientology was like a cow pie laced with pearls. You have to dig through the crap to find the pearls. The pearls she referred to were pearls of wisdom, pearls of spiritual knowledge.

For many years after quitting, I chose to view Scientology this way. As time went by and as I did some research, I started to realize, that all the pearls of Scientology that I had found were synthetic pearls. I decided that it would be better to go view the real things. Once having done that, I realized that the synthetic 'pearls' were rather cheesy in comparison to the real things.

This is the simile I developed to explain the meaning of my past involvement in Scientology and my leaving:

1. Scientology for me, was like a cow pie laced with fake pearls.
2. The results of continuing to dig through this cow pie would be:
   • To spend big sums of money to find fake pearls.
   • To find fake pearls.
   • To get stinky from digging through a cow pie.
3. The best thing I could do for myself, once I decided to quit digging through the Scientology cow pie, was to wash my hands and get all of the cow pie stuff off of me. I decided to throw away the fake pearls (they were worthless to me even though they cost me a bundle!).
4. I still wanted real spiritual pearls, so I decided to look around in places other than cow pies.
5. I had to be careful though, because Scientology isn't the only cow pie cult out there and I didn't want to get myself into another stinky situation. (Came close a couple of times.)
6. If anyone ever tries to convince me again that I need to pay big money for the privilege of digging through a cow pie, I am going to tell them to go to hell.