((I have not read this yet so I have no idea what it says, but I have talked to Allan Hacker a bit on the phone about his operation and I think some of you might be interested in investigating this further for yourselves. Allan will be on the net in a short while and will be able to answer your questions directly. In the meantime if you have any interest, I am sure he would be happy to talk to you.)) Acceptance Services Center, ntc. P.O. Box 390696 Mountain View CA 94039 Fax: 415/964-2090 Tel: 415/ 964-3436 March 1 1994 Dear Homer, Well, finally! Here is that letter I've been promising. It's probably a bit longer than you expected, but then it takes as much as it takes. I decided to write to you in ascii on disk because I thought that would facilitate your sending it along to the friends we discussed. Thanks for the books and other material. I'm still working my way through it all. For the benefit of those who haven't met me this time around or seen me since Scn. CC, I'll review a little background before getting into what I'm up to these days. When the so-called Scientology 9 (or 11, depends on who's counting) plea-bargained in the Florida case (1980), I decided the Church was committing treason against its members and mission, and I and disconnected. I had my disconnect affidavit notarized and filed in the archives of both local newspapers in Las Vegas, and I served it personally on my CO, Betty Murakami, ED CCLV. She said the most interesting thing after she read it, "You can't do this. You know what's going on - you're either with us or against us." I told her that I had already done it, and I reminded her of infinity-valued logic and assured her that this is not an either-or situation. It was a clean break, and I was never comm-eved or declared. (I suspect that could be taken to mean that I am the only Scientologist in good standing - the church in treason takes it members with it, and everyone else has been kicked out! No thanks, as things stand.) I then spent a few years knocking around politics and other social institutions looking for ways to further the mission. One thing I was sure of: I wanted nothing to do with any type of dictator, messiah- style or otherwise. One of the best things I did early on was to completely walk away from "the tech". I went out and lived life on its own terms for a few years, and got reacquainted with what the world looks like to J.Q. Earthling. For a while I even tried to pretend that this was okay. But the drive to do something about things was always there. And I never stopped speculating on the nature of a better format. Then one fine summer day in 1986 it happened. I had experienced a magnificently clear reality on the true nature of existence only a few days before. Now, sitting at the edge of a mountain meadow, pondering it all, I happened to ask the right question, and the veil lifted. I could see everything! Who I am, what my job is, what my team has done so far, and what still needs to be done. This put the icing on the cake. The team I just mentioned is a volunteer "Earth Project" group. We are a recovery team, and our job is to restore consciousness and self- awareness to the displaced who find themselves here. It was time to get back to work. I decided that I would do best by starting the current project over: (1) Articulate the truth; (2) Build a vehicle (probably another church-type operation to be consistent with the level of the work and to facilitate freedom from "official" and Scn interference); and, (3) Bring everyone home. (1) Articulate the Truth I have found the errors, and corrected them. My predecessors all did well as far as they went, but for whatever reasons they never actually said what it was they saw, if they truly even saw anything. And that includes Ron. Let me go to the side a bit on the Ron thing. Ron is not source. Neither am I, nor is anyone else, at least in the sense of being exclusive. Ron had a dim access, nothing more. True, he did a lot with it, but most of his work was built on the unacknowledged input of the rest of us. Ask the early 50's old-timers. Ask the guy who invented clay modeling as a compensation for his own dyslexia and wrote it up and sent it in, only to see it emerge as Ron's study breakthrough several months later. Ask the publishers of Sunset books about the verbatim correlation between their book on saunas and the HCOB on how to build a sauna. Ron is really a self-styled victim of under-acknowledgement who in the end gave in to the impulse to wrest recognition from the world. That's okay - nobody's perfect. Or, everybody's perfectly imperfect. Whatever. Ultimately, Ron is just another member of a team of volunteers here to do a job. I don't think he was up to being deified, and it got the best of him. And he wasn't truthful and forthcoming enough to pull it off while yet demanding all the credit. Petty BS, if you ask me. No wonder the org went treasonous. Back to articulating the truth. I found that no one had ever developed an adequate and correct description or definition of life force, or of the individual. These are important details. They set the tone of everything else. Minor differences here grow to immense discrepancies in their ultimate implementations. Let's look at Ron's definitions. Theta is the life force. The universe is something else. And the individual is stuck in the middle, fighting theta's battles in the conquest of MEST. A grim picture, if you ask me. Thetans, the isolated bastard children of an unexpressed god, are continually being upset by MEST trespassing into them and stealing away their life force. And people are run around by externally-oriented minds over which they must take cause but of which they can never be brought to full ownership. Theta must conquer MEST, but MEST is Theta's creation! What's to conquer? Why all the effort (implicit in the war metaphor)? Where is the duality coming from? From Ron. From his choice of language and from his tendency to fight with things. From his need to be the only one. The Axioms, etc? Excuse me for kicking sacred manna, but there is no reactive mind. There is no mind at all. Further, there is no time track and no MEST. There isn't even much of an original purpose. There is just an infinite consciousness playing at being a multitude of isolated perspectives, involving itself with intricately recurring variations on a spectrum of themes, to avoid boredom. The whole thing started by accident and deteriorates through ignorance. A pinch too much forgetfulness and a pound of subsequent disorientation and you wind up here! Ultimately, however, none of it exists. It's simply an idea of AllThatIs HereAndNow. Nor is there a Bridge to Total Freedom. Or grades or levels. True reality is not like a pantry: you can't clean it out one compartment at a time. And there is no Out for there to be a "way" to. Everything in this arena is multidimensionally overlaid in the Here & Now. BUT. I did not intend to make this a rant against anything. So let me move past what others said wrong or didn't say at all. Let me give you an idea of what I see. You can change the nature of your experience of the game. You can change the aspectal persona you present as yourself in playing the game. You can even play the game of not playing. (For a while, that is, because you won't stay "away". In the final analysis, anything to do is better than nothing to do, and the most intense experiences are the most treasured. A clue.) HOW do you change? By changing your focus. By freeing your attention from all the places you've been leaving it forever. By getting unstuck so you can BE HERE NOW. I remember a party in the early 70's. We were speculating on the nature of OT8. Somebody thought it might go something like this: You walk into the session room, and the folder is on the table. You sit down, set up, open the folder, and... on a single page, in the middle of the page, is written, "TR-O". It's just you and your surprise for a moment, and then you get it. You smile to yourself, and as you begin to put down your session notes, you notice that there are no walls. I have since found that the truth really is that simple. That's most of the reason we don't see it. The rest of the reason is that we are held apart from the simple truth by narrow ideas. And those come from incorrect and even inverted definitions. It isn't true that Spirit and materia are of separate universes; It isn't true that the individual isn't in the physical universe; It isn't true that there is a physical universe; It isn't true that anything is anywhere but where you are; It isn't true that there are suppressives (ask me about PD); And most of the rest of it isn't true either. Nothing exists except by the immediate and continuing action of consciousness; There is only one consciousness, infinitely subdivided within itself by its own decision to assume limited points of view, and each of us is that consciousness pretending to be only local in the grand illusion; Each of us is all of us and possesses all of the ability; Each of us is both the player and the game; And each of us wins at winning and at losing in the same moment. We only get into trouble when we resist participation in an event whose parameters are broader than our immediate standards; We only get clear by terminating that resistance and recovering the frozen attention from that investment; And we only stay clear by coming to an understanding of what we is and how we does it. I have accepted the eternal validity of Spirit in all its iterations; I have sworn myself to the task of the dissolution of the tyrannies of ignorance, deception and manipulation; I have found the essence of the individual in its expression of Free Will; I have redefined Spirit and the individual, in affirmative terms; I have redefined ethics, in terms of integrity; I have discovered a true structure of thought, and therefore a simple process for clearing; And I have defined and created an ethical church. (2) Build a Vehicle I believe we need at least one church. I believe that because I find all this to be completely and transcendently religious. Maybe in a heretofore unheard-of way, but we can't let local superstitions dictate truth, now can we? We need church for a couple of reasons. Church is the correct format for religion. In the U.S., where our future is decided, we have the absolute protection of the First Amendment when we do it right. And, if we do it any other way, we run the risk of finding our methods incorporated into the state sponsored pseudo-religion (psychology) and ourselves barred from functioning without licenses, the terms of which are dictated by people who don't get it. I have looked long and hard at the implications of the church question. I believe certain considerations must be taken into account. Because of the First Amendment, no government entity can legitimately undertake to define, license or regulate a church. That is why it is an error to incorporate, non-profit or otherwise. To petition a State to grant a corporate charter is to give the State jurisdiction it would not otherwise have. They can't reach in of their own accord, but you can invite them in. In business, you can make the mistake of "piercing the corporate veil", which means to breach the separation between your personal affairs and those of your corporate business, thereby making yourself subject to the financial and other liabilities of the company. To ask the State for permission to exist and to function is to breach the separation of church and state, and gives to the State the status of creator. And that means the power to dictate. Thus, jurisdiction. I also believe that it is a mistake to ask for tax exemption. That also is a grant of jurisdiction. Worse, it is playing into a bad system. Tax games are wasteful, tend to support the status quo, and serve to hide the severity of the system's problems. If you don't like the taxes, change the system! And anyway, whether or not the State has any jurisdiction over a church, it still must protect our persons and rights in the actual exercise of our religion(s), as well as our communal property. Failing to make due exchange for that protection is improper. We must develop workable relationships with all those whose cooperation assists or protects us. The alternative is to alienate them and ourselves, and most of us have already seen where that can lead. The proper format for a church is an Ecclesiastical Trust. This is formed by agreement of those involved and perpetuated by those who stay, and has absolutely nothing to do with government. When a church is formed this way, the separation of church and state is preserved. When you consider this, and then look around, you will find that generally there are no real churches as contemplated by the constitution, just non-profit corporations! Using the courts to guarantee exclusive rights to religious doctrine or exclusive control over religious practice is impossible. The only reason we see the illusion of this happening is that the US Supreme Court has not yet gotten the chance to answer a properly put question on the subject. We cannot use the courts in this manner, nor can we permit others to attempt to do so. If someone tries to trespass against the separation of church and state there is only one correct response: nul jurisdictus. The courts must be respectfully informed that the issue is of a religious nature, over which they have no jurisdiction. No other arguments should be made, and no defense offered. The only way you can lose this game is to play it, to join in by arguing the points alleged by your attacker. Your response to the complaint becomes your grant of jurisdiction. Save your legal funds for the appeals process and take it to the top. Once you have challenged jurisdiction it must be proven beyond the mere assertion, and this cannot be done. So you win on appeal. No babel about who wrote what, no force. Just open availability in the marketplace of ideas. And no jurisdiction means no legitimate cease and desist orders. I personally would immediately appeal (Demand negation of) any such directives and then get right back to work. Where a court has no jurisdiction it also has no authority. Of course, there is the part about having an organization at all. Well, I ask, how are we doing without one? It doesn't have to be bad, that's up to us. And it doesn't have to be solitary. But to be a religion, I believe, it has to have a set of principles that give rise to its practice and that bind/bond its members. Those principles may be put forth by anyone or any number of people. In the church I have founded, that happens to be me right now. Certainly that will change as we continue to play at the flow of time. And what of those who disagree? Their options remain open. What we do cannot restrict them. So what is an ethical church, and what would its religion look like? To answer the first question we must know what ethics is, and that has never been properly answered (until the publication of my book, "Mind Matters - how thoughts become reality"). Ethics is not actions, neither taken against the individual nor taken by him. Ethics is not about contemplating survival. Hell, doing the ethical thing in an unethical place can get you killed! You already know that! Ethics is the decision-process in support of integrity. Being ethical is simply being yourself and representing yourself truthfully, to the best of your ability in the moment. The practice of ethics itself is the never-ending re-expression of self in the quest for consistent decisions as to what actions to take, what promises to make, which things to say, and which lifestyle to live - in short, who to be. Every individual must find these answers for itself, with or without assistance. Therefore, an ethical church would be one that expounds, encourages, facilitates and defends the responsible exercise of free will. An ethical church would look like a happy place where people come to gain insight into themselves and their relationship with and through the various domains of life, and to socialize with likeminded others. They would come and go freely, within the reasonable constraints of service-delivery frameworks, and they would naturally flow support to the church in the form of money and evangelism (hopefully quiet and respectful evangelism!). Acceptance, the philosophy I have articulated, is not so radically different as to require anyone to commit to a major change in lifestyle. People from all walks of life have embraced it already -all types of Christians, Buddhists, Moslems, atheists, scientists, and mystics. Even psychologists! The basic idea is that we are all in and of this mess together, both as co-creators and as effects. There is only one Being, being many individuals and imagining into existence entire playgrounds, through those individual extensions of itself. There is only one life, and each of us is simultaneously living each variation thereof. Some of us call this past lives, some call it parallel lives. I call it multidimensionality. The definition: Acceptance is appreciation without significance. (Appreciation is willingness to experience things as-is. Significance is interpretation, or added-on meaning.) [Mind Matters, p. 33] Everywhere, all the time - life is a celebration of itself. The only exception is when you lose sight of all that and begin to believe a bit too strongly in the illusion, and become resistive to it. (3) Bring Everyone Home. Well, perhaps not everyone immediately. There are those who assert their games, who will insist on other things, and that's okay. Acceptance, and Acceptance Services Center (the actual church) is only there for those who see it. Coming on board, and staying on, are acts of free will, after all. No one among us can be permitted to interfere with that. Getting "home" probably means something like self-discovery for most people. I suspect that few will make it an issue of location, since one creates games wherever one is. It's more likely the return to an unabridged self-aware state. If it's more than that, it's at least that. We can at least get them that far. On that note, I have found an amazingly workable description of how we make our problems. This has led to incredible simplification of the process of clearing. It required a lot of redefining of terms (mostly back into English, as well as toward greater precision) and the restructuring of several of the old standbys such as the Dynamics (now the Domains -and subdomains-) and the Conditions (now the Standings and their Procedures). I have developed a single set of assessments which, depending on which of three points of focus one orients them to, results in the almost immediate vanishing of unwanted conditions (the Conditions Assessment), the realignment of life (the Domains Assessment) and the ever-expanding recovery of ability (the Prime Paradigm Assessment). And yes, although I said there are no grades, there are still gradients: they must be done in that order. Along the way, I developed a diagram of negativity called The Anatomy of an Incident that leads directly toward valid processes and away from everything else. None of this will be kept secret. It is already all available in the courses I teach, and will be published in various books and computer programs. I have published the first two tools already, and more are in the works. The only thing in the way is the limits on the time I have available to invest in them. What I need now is people. As I add to the available toolbox, I prefer to delegate tasks and authority to others so I can focus on the articulation. I also appreciate questions, suggestions and critiques. What does my game look like so far? There is the church, Acceptance Services Center. And there are its missions. First is BlueFlame Impressions, the publishing unit. Next there is Articulate Management, a business consultancy. And then, coming whenever feasible, Acceptance University Network, a private school system from pre-school through graduate school. Holding everything together is ASC Missions Group, ntc. Every one of these entities uses and applies the same philosophy and is bound by the same general policy. An example of this is our Non- indoctrination Policy: "Free will, and the unquestioned right of every individual to make personal choices without duress from anyone, are to be respected absolutely and honored above all purposes whatsoever, whether a particular choice is fully informed or not." This policy is printed at the front of all of our publications and is included in the terms of Articulate Management's consulting contract. A.M. won't continue with a client that abuses free will. Yes, this means we let people make mistakes. It even means we'll let them stay in the mud if they insist. Why not? They won't really get better if you manipulate or force them through the motions. Better yet, they are immortal aspects of consciousness itself, so they aren't going to die or disappear! If they want to play, let them! It's not for us to approve anyone's game. The first step of potential involvement with Acceptance is to read my book, "Mind Matters". It is largely historical and technical, and doesn't read like a novel all the way through. There is a 30- page section on the Fundamentals that takes a little work. Maybe even a course. But the truly interested can get enough from it to decide if they want to take another step. Another thing that should be done is the Effectiveness Profile(TM). This is a computerized replacement for personality tests. The user responds to 100 multiple-choice propositions about how things are going, and then prints out a graphical comparison of 20 effectiveness attributes in 6 categories. There is an 80-page manual on the use of the program and the interpretation of the results. I developed and programmed this myself. It is original and consistent with the Acceptance Fundamentals, and is everyone's first step. In fact, this is the essence of Acceptance: to deal with what is there. The Effectiveness Profile is currently used several ways. The public uses it as a stand-alone self-improvement guidance program, to help improve focus on what to work on next, or first. We use it in personal counseling to help identify the focus on the condition to be handled. We also use it in business to identify the major problem that needs to be handled. Further, independent consultants and counselors are using it similarly in their practices. The profile program is currently available in both DOS-disk sizes. It will soon be available for the Mac. Another book, in revision and temporarily unavailable, is "Decisions - Perspective and Process in Ethics". We will finally have an upbeat non-war-metaphor approach to doing the right thing correctly. It covers the philosophical aspects of integrity and morality, the mechanical aspects of ethics, and the functional aspects of task and project management. Whew! I get excited just thinking about it, and I'm the one writing it! But then, I need all this information to be accessible in one coherent package just as much as the next guy. Future books will include "Articulate Management", the complete business management volume; "TruthQuest", the "big book" on Acceptance; and various topic-specific volumes on such subjects as 1-on-1 tutoring and consulting. And someday, the Assessment processes I mentioned earlier will be delivered by interactive computers. Talk about privacy and folder security! You'll be able to take your data with you on CD. Maybe even run the process on your own computer. I will be starting a newsletter/magazine, "The Messenger", within a few months, depending on public interest. I have included Mind Matters and the Effectiveness Profile with this disk so you can check them out. I'd like your input. If anyone wants copies of these, they can ask for them in stores (distribution is still limited at this time) or order them directly from us. We exchange them for donations. The requested amount for Mind Matters is $7 US + $1 mailing costs in the US, $2 outside the US. For the Effectiveness Profile it's $29 US + $2 costs in the US, $4 outside. When Decisions is available, it will be $11 US plus $1 - $2 shipping costs. The Messenger will be free to A.M. clients, and graduates and members whose tithes are current. As to tithing, I think it's a better and more stable mechanism. I already have several personal clients who tithe monthly and offer additional amounts with petitions for services, to cover the extra costs. It's like base support plus value offerings, and covers training as well as counseling. It seems to work. Since not everyone is clear on tithing, let me explain a bit about it. The idea in tithing is to support the general effort so as to assist the expansion reach to others, and to help guarantee the future availability of the church to yourself. So tithing isn't an on-again off-again thing. It begins when you join up and continues for the remainder of your life, unless you become dissatisfied and leave the church, at which time you stop, of course. Tithe means "the tenth part", and that's how you figure it. The Judeo- Christian tradition on tithing comes from the 12 tribes of Israel. Eleven of them each set aside the best tenth of their productivity to support the 12th, the ministerial tribe, Levi. That left the Levites free from secular worries so they could focus on the greater good. How would you have liked to have that kind of security and freedom as a staff member?!! I hope this answers most of your questions for the moment. I also hope it gives rise to many more. I'll be finishing a more formal introductory pamphlet covering all this, hopefully in a few weeks. I'll send it to anyone who requests it and covers the +/- $2 cost. A comment on asking for money: I've already been bled dry once by a group who thought I must be under some divine obligation to share what I have found at no charge, since it's truth and therefore doesn't belong to me. I agree that it's about the philosophy and its applications, and not me. I have no problem with that. But if I am to remain available over the long term to provide the service of bringing this stuff forth, then I and those who help me must be supported by those who benefit. Not to mention a simple natural law called Exchange. Besides, I have since realized that I don't have to do anything. If I can find it, others can too. I could just go fishing, and let them. I haven't, though, because there just isn't enough time left in the current local situation for it to be likely. We need a core of clear individuals who can be dedicated to the benevolent (nonforced) realignment of the the world to a more desirable probable future than the one that's coming, and we need them now. That said, I need people and the cash flow to support them. The cash flow must come and is coming from normal operations - books, Profile programs, courses, services and tithes (no bankruptcies, thank you). The people are coming from among those who discover what we have. I thank you in advance for every person to whom you forward this letter. Love, Allen