Self-denial

Introduction: Self-sacrifice and self-denial drag people down. Self-respect, helpfulness, and goodwill enable people to find the right path. Here are some articles by L. Ron Hubbard that will help you gain clarity and set you on the right path!

Self-sacrifice versus self-respect

Today, a few self-explanatory quotes from L. Ron Hubbard.

My only question is this: Are we being conditioned into a criminal society, or is this merely the true face of a society in which taboos have disappeared?

You probably know the saying: “A fish rots from the head down.” And when you look at what is currently happening around the world – well, these things do not simply happen by themselves.

Much love,

Max Hauri

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Unethical behavior begins with self-denial

The only unethical thing I have ever been able to discover is for an individual to deny himself. And if an individual thoroughly enough denies himself, believe me, he's unethical because he'll wind up by denying himself and everybody else and everything across the eight dynamics.  That's real unethical – also immoral.

And you'll find out the downgrade of everybody was when he denied his own strength, truth and power. And so an auditor has to solve that. It's a solution that comes rather easily.

Getting Up Speed (Part II) 17.11.53

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The criminal lost his self-respect

The criminal who has elected himself bad cause through having found it impossible to trust himself (and a criminal career always begins at the moment when the criminal-to-be loses his self-respect; a career of prostitution cannot begin until self-respect is lost; and self-respect is only lost when one considers himself to be bad cause) can only escape becoming an effect by fighting all good cause. The reformation or reclamation of the criminal does not depend upon punishment, which only seeks to make him more MEST than he is, nor yet upon good cause, which he must fight, but upon the reestablishment of the criminal's self-respect; for only after this is he capable of being good cause.

Scientology 8-8008

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We are the ones who judge ourselves most harshly

Probably every drunkard has made people into slaves by pushing alcohol down their throats. It's wonderfully literal, this whole thing. Awfully condemnatory too. But if you want to solve human ills, you'd better understand this, because man condemns himself more than any judge or jury will ever do. He has an instinct for what is right.

He has an instinct for what is wrong. And it's based on the eight dynamics. The eight dynamics, morals, ethics – these things all go hand in hand.

He knows when he is doing right. But after he has committed too many overt acts and when he cannot get enough motivators, then he says to himself, "There's nothing I can do about paying my debt to society, so it doesn't matter what I do." And you get a criminal.

He's already had to decide that. He couldn't make it come out even. He couldn't suffer as much as he'd made people suffer. And so he had to just say, "Well, it doesn't matter what I do now." Now he really goes in for overt acts, only on a total irresponsibility.

Overt Act Motivator Sequence – Bulletin 4.01.59

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The true nature of human beings

Religion is the first sense of community. Your sense of community occurs by reason of mutual experience with others. Where the religious sense of community and with it real trust and integrity can be destroyed then that society is like a sand castle unable to defend itself against the inexorable sea.

For the last hundred years or so religion has been beset with a relentless attack. You have been told it's the "opiate of the masses", that it's unscientific, that it is primitive; in short, that it is a delusion.

But beneath all these attacks on organized religion there was a more fundamental target: the spirituality of man, your own basic spiritual nature, self-respect and peace of mind. This black propaganda may have been so successful that maybe you no longer believe you have a spiritual nature but I assure you, you do.

In fact, you don't have a soul, you are your own soul. In other words, you are not this book, your social security card, your body or your mind. You are you. This will become more apparent, if it isn't already clear, as you read this book.

Convince a man that he is an animal, that his own dignity and self-respect are delusions, that there is no "beyond" to aspire to, no higher potential self to achieve, and you have a slave. Let a man know he is himself, a spiritual being, that he is capable of the power of choice, and has the right to aspire to greater wisdom and you have started him up a higher road.

Of course, such attacks on religion run counter to man's traditional aspirations to spiritual fulfillment and an ethical way of life.

For thousands of years on this planet thinking man has upheld his own spirituality and considered the ultimate wisdom to be spiritual enlightenment.

The new radical thought that man is an animal without a spiritual nature has a name: totalitarian materialism. Materialism is the doctrine that "only matter matters".

Volunteers Minister Handbook

L. Ron Hubbard