Author Geir Isene

My current motivation

Geir Isene 19 Comments

When I left the Church of Scientology almost one year ago, I had three distinct motivations:

  1. To help stop the human rights abuses in and around the church
  2. To help the general public differentiate between Scientology and the Church of Scientology
  3. Get the teachings of L. Ron Hubbard freely released on the Internet

Since one year I have been quite active on the Net, first with my Scientology blog, then with The Scientology Forum and other forums and blogs, and now with this blog right here.

Looking at my motivation during the past year, it has gone from “getting out there and letting everyone know” and “let’s handle the abusive church” to something different in the present.

I do not feel compelled to stop the abuses by the church. Actually, I feel a stronger motivation for helping people in Somalia (as an example, albeit not a far-fetched one).

I feel the urge to help people, create, to do art and to communicate to individuals, to do amazing stuff one-on-one and to generally kick ass in the good sense. The urge to make a difference – not by stopping something bad but by doing something good. Nah, forget good. Doing something zesty, something excellent.

More later.

Dreams

Geir Isene 10 Comments

I believe there is much to gain through control of one’s own dreams.

On one hand your dreams can be your future reality. Gaining control of those dreams and ambitions will serve you well.

The other types of dreams happens when you are asleep. These represent your own imagination, your own universe if you will. Gaining control of these nightly activities may prove quite useful as they are the gateway to creativity and to imposing your own on the common reality around you. Maybe the two types are but aspects of one.

Ever since I was a child I had some control over my dreams at night. I could conjure scenes and populate them with people, things and monsters. I could sometimes decide I could fly. Or be invulnerable. But often the dreams got out of control and happily so. Except when the monsters got out of control, then it became a nightmare. I would often know that I was dreaming, and sometimes I could press myself to wake up from a nightmare.

Dream

A maze

The coolest experience I ever had while asleep was when I conducted an orchestra while I on the fly composed the music – violins, cymbals, clarinets and the rest of the ensemble. That was incredible. In fact I couldn’t believe I was doing it, so I decided to wake up to find out if I got the music as an external influence from outside my dream. As I woke up, I could hear the silence of the night. No music. Nothing. So I got back to sleep and picked it up from where I left it, only this time I decided to up it a few notches; I decided to mix the classical orchestral piece with Billy Idol’s “Hot in the city”. That was freakin’ amazing.

A few notable out-of-control nightmares kept returning – stuff that just wasn’t controllable. I would say there was a 30% chance in any given week that I would have a nightmare – pretty constant throughout my life. Until I finished OT 8 (a spiritual level in Scientology) four years ago. Since then, I have not had one single nightmare. If that would have been due to sheer chance, it would compare to picking up one single predefined proton on the way between our Sun and our nearest neighboring star (Proxima Centauri) (the chance is roughly 1 in 4*10^31). Albeit one of the very small gains from doing OT 7 and 8, it is still a distinct one.

I would argue that one of the symptoms of gaining more control of my life has been how well I can “play” my dreams – both while asleep and awake. Both are cool – but playing out my dreams with others in the game of life is the coolest.

Job description: Scientology hardcore critic

Geir Isene 26 Comments

A small part of the job description:

  1. Be passionate about Scientology.
  2. Keep in mind that Scientology is bad. Always.
  3. Don’t admit to anything right in Scientology.
  4. Don’t admit that anything in Scientology could possibly have a positive effect on you.
  5. Keep a negative attitude toward anything pushed by the church.
  6. Treat anything written by LRH as garbage.
  7. Thrash all Scientology celebrities.
  8. When encountering anything positive about the church or about Scientology, disregard it as “brainwashing”.
  9. Always attack, never defend against any criticism.
  10. Ridicule scientologists
  11. If a criticism “hits home”, react violently, loudly cry “foul” and dramatize so that the attacker can see how unfair the criticism was.
  12. Associate only with people who agree how horrible the Church of Scientology is.
  13. Label Scientologists (like “naive”, “brainwashed”, “idiots” etc.)

Feel free to suggest additional points.

Job description: A Church of Scientology Party-line Toer

Geir Isene 11 Comments

A small part of the job description:

  1. Be passionate about Scientology.
  2. Keep in mind that Scientology is good. Always.
  3. Don’t admit to anything wrong in Scientology.
  4. Don’t admit that anything in Scientology could possibly have a negative effect on you.
  5. Keep a positive attitude toward anything pushed by the church.
  6. Treat anything written by LRH as gospel.
  7. Support all Scientology celebrities.
  8. When encountering anything negative about the church or about Scientology, disregard it as “entheta”.
  9. Always attack, never defend against any criticism.
  10. Ridicule opponents (like Anonymous)
  11. If a criticism “hits home”, react violently, loudly cry “foul” and dramatize so that the attacker can see how unfair the criticism was.
  12. Associate only with people who agree how excellent the Church of Scientology is.
  13. Label non-Scientologists and critics (like “wogs”, “SPs”, “PTSs” etc.)

Feel free to suggest additional points.

In search of the Eye

Geir Isene 6 Comments

This is only the start of a Science Fantasy book I started on many years ago. It’s set in a 1900-1910 technological era but with magic still a force to reckon with. Putting this prologue out there might just get my motivation to some day complete the book.

“The game is set. Only his will shall decide the outcome”. The heavy velvet robes swayed as the two contenders rose from the table. Matching their wits and their insights was not uncommon. But never like this. Never had they played the game encompassing such a great arena and with this many elements. The game of life itself required more than sets of ivory and ebony pieces and a marble board. It included will – whatever that was – free or not; The proof will be the outcome.

The dark eyes of Salidus Taramostran rested for a while on his adversary. Temor Akatraz did a graceful job of hiding his emotions. A slight tremble around his nose however revealed the suspense. A brilliant mind, a genius scientist, physicist and mathematician. He knew a thousand ways a man could go mad and a couple of how to cure him. Temor could outriddel any man alive. A champion chess player, loving the game, loving the win. He was never a nerd, he knew his ways around women. Many a woman had fallen for the blue eyes, fair but stern expression, never revealing his true self. His body almost as fit as his mind. Stubbornness had gotten him far in life.

None of them looked nearly as old as they were. They still possessed that zest in life, that willingness to pick up the glove and to carry forward to victory. Both were intent on winning, if not for the same reasons.

Salidus’ gaze wandered, to other places, as usual. In and out of reality, of fantasy. An artist at heart, feeble to certain eyes, strong to others. A sort of mystery hung around the wise man. Creepy, yet calm. He was already leaving the game for the love of something else – a poem perhaps? Or maybe a little tune, humming ever so slightly in his mind. In stark opposition to Temor who never would leave this game. It would haunt him like that annoying little tune humming and chanting to rub away any lack of irritation. Temor wondered: “Did I pick the right boy? Of course it’s impossible to know on beforehand, but did I predict this one right?” The thought tormented him. He wanted to be sure like in chess where he would always hold more possibilities in his mind at once than any other man or creature. “Chess… but this is different… maybe… or maybe not. My predictions must be right, and so this is no different than a game of chess. I know the state of this game as we started and I know the rules. The outcome is bound to be set. It will be mate, for sure”.

Landscape of Amar

Extrapolating “free will“

Geir Isene 6 Comments

Let’s extrapolate the concept of free will with a wild abandon.

If there exists potential free will, free of any physical restrictions, that free will cannot have been created as time is a physical property. Thus the free will supersedes the physical universe, or co-existed with the physical universe if it has always been here.

As the free will causes changes in the physical universe, it represents the “cause” and space, energy and time is the “effect” of the free will acting.

Now if the physical universe is truly “effect” it is not capable of causing anything – it has no will of its own. The free will on the other hand can not be affected by anything except by its own choice. Therefore, anything that the free will experiences is by its own volition. By choosing otherwise, the free will experiences otherwise.

While the physical universe is total effect, the free will to be truly free is total cause.

Whereas free will changes by its own choice, its choice may be swayed – by its experiences and thus its choices. A feedback mechanism is then seen as the free will chooses its own experiences and is then affected by them. This may lead to the free will apparently loosing control of its will by association and believing it has less free will. It will then act as less free, less “cause”. To change this feedback mechanism, the free will can be coerced by an other free will to believe it is more “cause” and less “effect” and hence bring the situation under control of the free will once again.

Any coercion will do as long as the free will believes the solution presented will work. This may explain how many people are helped by a wide plethora of practices aimed at bettering the individual. It may also explain the Placebo effect.

A few notes:

  1. In this discussion of the free will, one could simply reduce the it to a descussion of whether “will” exists at all. Forget “free will”. Does “will” exist? If the answer is “yes”, reality is neither purely deterministic and/or random. “Will” is that other factor beyond determinism and quantum randomness.
  2. By “choice” is meant the possibility of “will” being exercised.
  3. A case can be made for the physical universe and the many “wills” within it being a whole rather than two separate concepts – where the physical universe is the result of a consensus of the “wills” involved.