Flunk. Start.

by Sands Hall

  “Is it because I don’t read music?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “Lots of talented singer-songwriters don’t read music. But the music, folk music in general, isn’t complicated or interesting. Jazz, on the other hand—jazz is music.”

  A number of fine musicians taught in Jamie’s music school. All were Scientologists, all played jazz, and all, like Jamie, smoked. I began to understand that while drugs, even aspirin, were off-limits, cigarettes were fine; if you were Clear or OT, you’d never get something as mundane as cancer. And if you did, you must have done something to “pull it in.”

  Yet Jamie’s back continued to be out. Even though we could have addressed what the spine in a marriage might be, even as it was clear that ours was very much out of alignment, we never spoke of these implications. What we did speak of was my Reactive Mind. All the unexamined incidents stored there were making me, and therefore us, unhappy. “The only thing wrong in the marriage is what you perceive to be wrong,” he’d say. “We’d be fine if you were just happy.”

  This sentence, which came up in various forms, always served to stop me in my charged-up tracks. We’d be fine if you were just happy. It was my fault. It was my “case.”40

  Again and again, after a fight, or, as more and more I folded Scientology’s lingo into my vocabulary, ARC Break (recorded in my journal as ARCX), I’d figure out how what was wrong, was wrong with me. I’d have an epiphany—Hubbard’s word is “cognition”—take responsibility, apologize, and on we’d lurch.41

  Those cognitions allowed me to examine ways in which I could—and did—improve aspects of my nature. These realizations led to an increasing interest in Hubbard’s path. This search for spirituality was, I see now, the biggest reason I married Jamie.

  All my life I’d had moments—I might be standing backstage waiting for an entrance, sitting at a brunch with friends—moments that should have been “happy,” when I’d feel the bottom drop out. There’d be a writhing, tortured sensation that made me have to grip a piece of my costume or the edge of the table. Life felt meaningless. I could, I should be doing or thinking or being something “more worthwhile.” But I had no idea what that might be.

  I’d let meditating drop from my routine when I moved to Los Angeles, but prior to that, for almost a decade, I’d used the mantra given to me that long-ago afternoon with the Maharishi. But I didn’t think of meditating as a religion. Religion was an opiate for the uneducated (usually right-wing) masses; it was something archaic, whose cultural artifacts one might put on a shelf or wear on a chain around one’s neck. I’d no idea that a pilgrim lurked in my psyche, even though I’d long wondered, feeling traitorous, if life might be enhanced by believing in, trusting in a larger compass. So in marrying Jamie, I was groping my way toward something that had always fascinated me: the idea of religion itself.

  flunk. start.

  Eventually, as long as I didn’t have to step foot into an actual Org, I was persuaded to sign up for a course, Success Through Communication. I remember it being inexpensive, $25 or so, a huge relief. It was held in a West Hollywood bungalow that belonged to the woman who was the course supervisor, Ruth. The six or seven of us who showed up were each given a little glossy book. It all seemed innocuous, even a little corny.

  I read about the Cycle of Communication, I demoed my understanding, I was twinned with a man named Bob. As we drilled the first Training Routine, OT TR0 (sitting opposite another with eyes closed), I was struck by the idea that one must be ready to send a communication, as well as to receive one, with or without words. Sitting there, hands folded in my lap, I was reminded of what had caused me, over the years, to walk into churches, to read books on spirituality, above all why, for so long, I’d meditated. It was a matter of awareness and discernment, both of which, as Bob and I sat across from each other with our eyes closed for many, many minutes, glimmered and gleamed.

  You could get all that by reading about Buddhism, an interior voice muttered. How about just getting back to meditating? Why sit here in this corny bungalow doing this asinine thing?

  I took a breath and brought my attention back to the room in which I was sitting, and to Bob, breathing opposite. I don’t know. Be quiet.

  Ruth did not appear to notice my mental yammering, and by the end of the evening, Bob and I had done OT TR0 to her satisfaction. The hustle of gathering purses and coats and the cheerful goodbyes reminded me of the first rehearsal of a play, as you get to know your fellow cast members and the project you’ll be creating together—a sense of a shared endeavor that had always held enormous appeal.

  “See you tomorrow.” Bob waved.

  I waved back. As I drove home, I pondered that I would indeed see him the next night, and the next.

  The booklet was small; it didn’t seem like the course would take long, and yet—why take it at all? Jamie waxed on about how cool it was to be OT. And sure, it might be fun to soar like Superman or Tinkerbell. But what I found compelling was that so much of the Tech simply made sense. The Dynamics. The idea of overts and withholds. The idea that A + R + C = Understanding. The comm cycle. Even as I disdained the acronyms and abbreviations, even as a huge part of me wanted to sit in my parents’ living room with a glass of wine and scoff, I could not deny that as I’d practiced being ready to both give and receive a communication, in whatever form, I’d become even more deeply intrigued by Scientology.

  Especially in that it might offer possible answers to ancient questions: Why am I here? What happens when we die? Is this it? I’d always wanted a sense of a larger purpose. I’d long been entranced by the possibility that what we call “serendipity” and “synchronicity” are, in fact, much more—clues to a vast organism that includes us all. These fascinations were among those that over the years led me to read books on Eastern philosophy, to sit in the pews of dozens of cathedrals, to be grateful when a friend invited me along to Seder and I could bow my head over four thousand years of history unfolding with the salt and bitter greens. I yearned for a connection with, and a certainty about, a higher sensibility. I wanted, fiercely, to believe in a larger force, that we might be part of some vast plan that we only occasionally glimpse. Above all, I wanted, especially since my brother’s accident, to figure out a purpose: why I was on the planet at all.

  I parked beside our house in the Hollywood Hills and stood breathing in the faint smell of eucalyptus, thinking about a Sunday morning in San Francisco, during those years when I trained at ACT, when I’d decided to go to a service at Grace Cathedral. As the priest readied communion, he held up an actual loaf of bread. Round and, as it turned out, sourdough. Lit by rays of color pouring through a stained-glass window, it inspired me to join those walking toward the altar. With the rest of the communicants, I swallowed wine from a goblet and took a bit of that bread into my mouth. The rest of that day I enjoyed a remarkable, joyous sense of connection to everyone I encountered. Buying an apple, pressing coins into the Laundromat dryer, dodging across a crosswalk, I pulsed with wonder—had those around me eaten from that loaf? Had we shared the molecules of bread, and the colored light and prayer it contained? For the first time, I viscerally understood the word “communion.” It wasn’t about Christ’s body and blood. It had to do with intention and interaction and love.

  Leaning against my car, I stared out over the lights of Hollywood below. Scientology was an upstart crow of a religion. I wished there were a way to study what seemed interesting about it without having to “become” a Scientologist—that scared me. But it appeared to have answers. It had much to say about purpose. And it seemed to offer a bridge—there was no other word for it—across the existential chasm that too often yawned open before me.

  the next night we read about TR0, the Training Routine in which two people sit opposite one another with their eyes open. Ruth paced the room, keeping an eye on us keeping eyes on each other. That was it. For minutes at a time, just looking at each other’s eyes,
without breaking the stare.

  Again, it was a bit like meditation, when you’re trying to hold your mind steady on a mantra, or on the breath, while it makes these efforts to wander away from the present moment. But in this case, in addition to dealing with your own mind, with your own thoughts, distracted by what might be going on in the room around you or the street outside, you must also take in the person opposite. After just a few minutes, that other face can go all wobbly. The nose seems to dominate, or the eyes to cross. Your own eyes water. You want to blink rapidly, or close your eyelids against the strain. An itch needs scratching. A sip of water seems vital. You must stretch, you need to yawn, you want to stop.

  With a huge groan, Bob suddenly blinked and stretched his arms above his head. Everyone laughed. Ruth did too, but clapped her hands and said, “Flunk!”

  By this point, Jamie had used the word with me numerous times, but I was nevertheless startled.

  Bob was horrified. “What?” he said.

  Ruth clapped her hands. “Start!”

  Bob and I raised our eyebrows at each other, but we got back to the drill. A few minutes later, Bob opened and closed his eyes like a dying fish.

  “Sands!” Ruth said. “That’s a flunk! Call it! That’s what a twin is for!”

  “Umm, flunk,” I told Bob, as sweetly as I could. “Umm, start.”

  “Good!” Ruth said.

  I couldn’t help but smile, and with a wicked grin, Bob said, “Flunk.”

  We laughed as if this were the funniest joke in the world. “Flunk!” we both said again, and, simultaneously, “Start.”

  Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better, I thought, remembering my brother quoting Beckett. But Theatre of the Absurd, which once I’d loved, seemed hollow now; the mockery existentialism makes of the idea that life can be meaningful. As I stared at Bob who stared at me, I thought of Sisyphus and his endless, hopeless task, how the stone will always get away from him and he must trudge down the hill and start again. And again. Even though he knows that he will always fail. As an undergraduate, and while shuttling props and costumes around the subways of New York, these ideas had been romantic, in a black-beret, Gauloise-smoking way. But now, in my thirties, they felt nothing but grim. I no longer wanted anything to do with an absurdist world. It was in part what had claimed my brother. I wanted life to have meaning. Which was, I reasoned, trying not to blink, why I was sitting in a tidy, orderly course room, engaging with what seemed to be a tidy and orderly and meaningful system.

  Once Bob and I’d signed off on that drill, we turned to TR0 Bullbait, which involved one of us making faces and saying shocking things and telling jokes. If I (and, turn about, Bob) laughed, or “broke,” we were to flunk each other, then immediately start again. We were to do it again and again until we were both able to keep TR0 going in the face of any attempt to break concentration.42

  It seemed terribly peculiar. Why would you want to “bullbait” someone? But even as I fretted that all this might be brainwashing, I began to see a point: to really be with another person, when circumstances demand, not to respond with laughter or anger when someone most needs to be heard, not to allow someone to “get” you with a barb or joke when you need stay focused. And while at first I was horrified by the term “bullbait,” the initial shock of the word soon wore off—was normalized. I have since read that this drill has been used in terrible, degrading ways, but that was not my experience. For me, the drill was about having buttons pushed and pushing them, purposefully, with the goal of gaining mastery over knee-jerk, unexamined reactions.

  I see that I may have persuaded myself of the drill’s benefits.

  Over the next few nights, we covered other TRs, which taught us to communicate with intention, to listen, and of course to acknowledge.

  I did not then realize that these drills train a person to master what is at the heart of Scientology: auditing. Every aspect of the Church swirls around that practice. So there’s a reason that the course, Success Through Communication, is so often recommended as a first step into Scientology. The TRs “train” one in both directions: to be an auditor; and, cleverly, also to be audited. Once started, it’s easy to be pulled inexorably along.

  It took me a long time to sort that out.

  i finished the course, and, as we were asked to do, wrote up some “wins.” Which were real enough. But, in spite of strong “regging,” I didn’t sign up for another course.43 A large part of my hesitation had to do with Jamie. Leaving him was never far from my mind. If I stepped further into the Church, wouldn’t that cement me to him? If I left him, would I also leave Scientology, which I was actually—though I could barely admit it—enjoying?

  Finally I agreed to the Purification Rundown, a kind of ongoing sweat lodge: For hours each day, while taking copious amounts of niacin, calcium, and magnesium, I sat in a sauna. My flushed, tingling skin was proof that my very cells were discharging accumulated toxins—from alcohol and drugs, from just living on planet Earth.

  In the midst of the “Purif,” I was called to audition for San Diego’s Old Globe Theatre. To my delight and surprise, I was hired. It had been some time since I’d worked in a prestigious theater, and the career leap seemed directly connected to my work in Scientology. My faith in the efficacy of the Church, and, by extension, the worth of my marriage, was in full swing, and I took that growing certainty with me to San Diego.

  Director Tom Moore created a delectable cream puff out of Oscar Wilde’s Importance of Being Earnest, and in addition to playing Cecily in the indoor theater, I was also cast as the sweet young thing in Molière’s The Miser, outdoors. That satisfying San Diego summer, 1982, could have been an opportunity to break away from what was, at that point, Scientology’s relatively delicate grasp, and to leave Jamie—the season was three months long and the drive to and from LA a six-hour round trip.

  But a profound loyalty or stick-to-it-iveness is part of my nature. In addition, I’d had so little acting work for so long, and it was easy to be persuaded that I’d landed the job because of Scientology. Was further success possible, would my marriage improve, if I kept on? So most Sundays, after the week’s final performance, instead of taking a book to the beach or partying with my colleagues on the day off, which in theater is Monday, I’d drive home. I’d spend what time with Jamie I could (though he was usually in his office) and arrive back on Tuesday in time to warm up for that evening’s performance.

  Among the things that made me want to trust L. Ron Hubbard was his statement regarding art: “A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists.”44 I wanted to share this with my parents. They would never say it in such an aggrandizing way (being artists), but once again I felt that Hubbard’s views coincided with those of my family: Art is of utmost importance. Engaging in it is of utmost importance!

  Yes, I thought it very fine, the way that brief sentence bequeathed both praise and duty. And in some weird need to uphold that duty, I found myself, to my horror, proselytizing to fellow cast members, in the dressing room, over coffee: a desperate need to convince myself as I tried to convince them. I know that I stunted a number of friendships, perhaps even a career—who would want to hire such a person; who would recommend to another that she should be hired?

  After the shows opened, my mother came to visit. The Importance of Being Earnest was pulling great reviews and full houses, and it was gratifying to have her there. As she met friends and colleagues, I was reminded of what I adored about her: the way she carried off a shawl thrown over her shoulders; her bright blue eyes, so interested, so curious; her engagement in conversations that ran the gamut from iambic pentameter to local wines to the future of live theater. The tense phone calls and letters of the previous year had created a terrible animosity that the visit did much to briefly eradicate.

  As she was leaving, I hugged her. “Oh, Mom, it’s been so much fun
to hang out with you!”

  Her lovely face flinched. “What do you mean, ‘hang out’?” she said. “Is that one of those awful Scientology phrases?”

  I laughed, a little shocked. “Not at all! It just means, I don’t know, being together, having fun. It’s nomenclature used by jazz musicians.”

  If I thought she might be impressed by that nice big word, I was mistaken.

  “We don’t say things like ‘hang out,’” she said. It felt like a slap.

  After I waved her off—and in spite of that harsh exchange, I was raggedly sorry to see her go—I walked on the beach for hours, wrestling with that “we”: we Halls, and by extension the whole cultured world “we” represented. I knew she loved me, knew she wanted the best for me. Scientology scared her; it scared me! She found things about Jamie alarming; I found them alarming. I should leave. I should leave. I should leave.

  But I thought of a conversation around a dinner table a few months before, when the talk among my parents and their friends had turned to Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits, and her stupendous eyebrows. “Who’s Frida Kahlo?” I’d asked, and Mother had pretty much hissed, “You know who she is!” I realized I’d embarrassed her, and it had taken every ounce of strength to say, “No, I don’t. Please tell me.”

  If I left Jamie, would I just be back in a world where I so often felt insufficient?

  I wish so deeply I’d left anyway, and found some other method to sort out this base need for approval. But standing there on that windy beach, I realized I was having critical thoughts again. By this time I was convinced that a critical thought always meant you’d done something to the person or thing you were criticizing. In this case, the transgression was doubting my marriage, doubting Scientology. Even as I saw the circular nature of this logic, I gave way beneath its weight. As I examine, now, this incredibly inactive agonizing, it seems that rather than Fail again. Fail better, it was Fail again, fail again, fail again—a flunk/start not of hopeful resilience, but, rather, of stubborn perseverance.