I recently became aware that Christopher Reeve (famous for his movie portrayal of Superman) bailed out on Scientology after he "fooled" the e-meter by giving his auditor a story he got from Greek mythology, which the auditor and the e-meter "bought".

Ron lists as a source of trouble people who are here to see if Scientology works. Keep that in mind as you read on.

Now let's just think this through for a moment. If you came into Scientology to get help or determine if it could advance you spiritually, would you try to scam the people and devices there to provide that help? The e-meter is not a lie detector, and auditors aren't normally psychic. So if you lie to them and get away with it, does it make sense that you're there to be helped? How could you imagine that successfully scamming people who are trying to help you proves the whole thing is fake?

Scientology isn't here to prove or disprove that you're a liar or a soundrel. It might or might not do that, but that's certainly not why LRH created it. It was created so that people who honestly put forth the effort could be helped to dig themselves out of the muck in which they find themselves. The fact that you can walk in and bamboozle people doesn't prove anything about Scientology. It proves that you have some agenda going on which is entirely outside the realm of getting better.

I've always been sort of perplexed by the source of trouble thing: people who are here to see if Scientology works. It always seemed kind of weird to me. When I first walked into a Church of Scientology, I didn't know if it would work or not. I didn't know anything about it. So until I'd been in it for a while, there wasn't any way I could possibly know if it would work. Wouldn't that qualify me as someone who was here to see if Scientology worked, and therefore make me a source of trouble? Or you could look at it more searchingly. Yep, I've had some auditing, so I'm not afraid of my wife anymore. But can Scientology really rid me of this awful fear of clouds I have? That's the question of, yes Scientology works on this, but will it work on that? It seems like questions such as that would be on a lot of people's minds. And wouldn't that make them sources of trouble?

Now having heard this story about Reeve, I can instantly see what LRH meant and how that's different than Scientologists who question every day whether Scientology can help with this or that condition. Apparently, Scientology was supposed to be able to prove if Reeve was obfuscating things, and if it did, then it might somehow have earned his respect or something. Of course, this means that Reeve's effort wasn't in trying to be helped, but instead trying to see if Scientology was worthy of his continued patronage or however he justified his actions. For him, this was just some sort of "game", not a real attempt to improve conditions.

Scientology is a workable technology. It works just as long as you're interested in helping yourself and being honest in your efforts to make that happen. The moment you step off that path, Scientology is more or less a waste of time. If you've already got it all figured out, then what do you need Scientology for? If you're hanging around to make your wife or your dad wrong, why do you need Scientology? If you're in Scientology because you need a tax deduction, you should probably figure out some other charity to be involved in.

Scientology isn't going to override your desire to stay the same, or maintain the status quo, or to make yourself right. Scientology isn't worth the money you spend on it (no matter how much or how little that is) if you're not constantly using it to better conditions in yours and/or others' lives. The moment it's used for some other purpose than to improve conditions, it's not worth anything.

Reeve did the right thing in getting out of Scientology. We couldn't have helped him. Because he wasn't sincere in his desire to use Scientology to better himself and his life. He was here to see if Scientology "worked" and his yardstick was if Scientology could catch him in a lie.

There is also a security check question that applies here, along the lines of "Are you here for some other reason than you say?" It's worth considering how that question relates to this situation, and why it is, therefore, a pretty good sec check question.