A walk

   I had a wonderful walk. I needed it too, posting about the day mom died was hard for me. Its been like I have been coming out of a fog since then, and writing about it cleared it up a bit more. It was a beautiful fall day today, in the 60's and a bit of breeze, but warm enough that it felt sort of hot when the sun was out and cool when the clouds blocked it, but not too much either way. And It smelled so good outside too. It reminded me of mom, she loved smells of nature. There is this one curve that has a fig tree right next to the road, and she would go that way even if it was not the closest way, just so she could smell the fig tree when she drove by. One time we were driving down the highway during the crush, when they do the grapes and it smelled so good that she pulled over to the side of the road to just sit and smell it. Someone even stopped to see if we needed help! Mom wasnt afraid to be totally weird if she felt like it. Or even if she didnt feel like it.
     My walk reminded me of other things about mom, and it relates to things people are asking me about her. And it reminded me about a walk her and I had this summer when she was still feeling ok. I had told about how she said she didnt want to be my mom anymore and how we would both pretend to be other people so we could make up reasons to be together and not be doing the mom daughter thing. We did it a few times, but it didnt take long for us to find a way to be her and me with out the mom daughter thing. We were more like real close friends, and we talked about stuff that most moms and daughters are scared too. We talked about sex stuff, men, what we wanted to be, her life before having kids, and her first marriage and the stuff that still affected her and the family from that, all kinds of things, but more honestly that we ever had before.
     Several people are curious about my mom and scientology, so here are some things. My mom joined it after she came back from europe and while she was still a teenager. She had left home at 18, so I think it was when she was 19. Her parents were already in it but she thought it was a cult and was out to get things from her mom and dad, but then she found that she liked some of the ideas and joined. And she stayed a member of it till she died. She was 54, so that is like 35 years.
     She was married to a man who was and still is a scientologist, before my dad, and he is my big sisters dad. My dad is not a scientologist. He says if he were required to label his beliefs he would probably be closest to buddhist. Scientology tried to get him to join a long time ago, but he said they didnt want to listen to what he had to say, and only wanted him so they could use it to make them look good. He does mental health research and they could say look at him and he's with us. My dad says they want to control people too much for him. This has caused some problems for the family, because the scientologists in it want to do stuff in scientology, but they have a rule that you can not do things if you know people who dont like scientology. My dad didnt say he didnt like it and in fact finds the ideas interesting. My grandpa and my dad will talk about it for hours, and its not like my dad is against it, but it just isn't for him.
     Scientology has something called operating thetan, and all the scientologists want to do it. My grandma did it to level 7 and my grandpa to level 3, but once my mom married my dad no one in the family could do operating thetan anymore. My grandma couldn't go to their ship, grandpa couldnt do anymore, my mom couldnt do anymore, and the worse was that my sisters dad couldnt do any more, and if he wasnt careful they would kick him out or make him no longer see his daughter!!! I think people should believe whatever they want if they dont hurt other people, but scientology doesnt like it that people dont believe it. Mom had to be careful that she never put her first child in the position of losing her father. This was all before I was even born! Maybe now that mom is dead, shelly's dad can finally do it. I dont really see why he put up with the rules, but I sort of do also. My mom taught me some of the operating thetan stuff, because she always said that you needed to know stuff in life to survive, and she wanted to protect me from life by making sure I knew the important stuff.
     And that brings me back to the walk I was remembering, when mom taught me how to do operating thetan stuff. We had been talking about people and how they acted and stuff when she told me she would show me some stuff that would help with people. The first thing she did was to tell me that she was going to make a picture in her mind and when she said "now" I was to tell her what it was. She said to be like in the way you get after a good meditation, quiet inside but super aware of what was going on around. So we did that for a while, her making pictures, really just like one thought or emotion, and me saying what I thought it was. To look at her with your eyes, it was like she had no expression or anything, but after a while I could tell what it was. Happy :), Sad, GRRR angry. She was good at it, she could really make you see what it was she wanted you too.  It wasnt like you see really but you know what it is and can tell it is there. Like seeing something invisible.
    We did that several times until I could get it alot, and then she told me that now I needed practice seeing people having pictures, and seeing who was having them. She told me to go shopping and sit for a while and watch the people around me and see if I could see their pictures and if I could spot who was looking at them. And I could sometimes, some people were like in a cloud! It was funny because now that she mentioned it it was kind of obvious. Some people were more quiet inside, but some were just like they were trying to watch 3 tv shows at once. I cant really usually see what there pictures are, but I do get a feeling about what they are. Mom said that it is an important skill to be able to see the part of a person that is the life, and to be able to see pictures of other people and tell whose they are, because sometimes the feelings you get from other peoples pictures can make you think they are your pictures and confuse you. Mom said being able to see pictures and the life in people is almost half of operating thetan. She said the rest is about communication and intention. She had real strong intention so she could make me see her pictures. But she said that intention was something I needed to learn slower, after seeing a lot more of how people use pictures and how they act. The thing she told me to look out for was if it was intention from the life or from something the picture was telling them. She said that intention could be a very powerful thing and needed to come from wanting something good and not from pictures, and that I would learn this from watching people this operating thetan way. I'm not really good at it, but I practice watching people at school. Its really cool to see people this way because its like I know stuff about them that they dont even know. I think people who have too many pictures are like almost disabled, and when you see someone who isnt looking at any, and especially if you and them both notice each other, its like you are connected somehow. I think I would rather be around people who dont use pictures, and I wonder if all scientologists are like that? But if they were why would they have silly rules about who you can know.
    My therapist Greta is one of those people who doesnt have a lot of pictures, she is just really there and quiet. My dad says she is one of the most present people he knows, he says she is in the now and pretty much no where else. She says she has never been a scientologist or any religion except that she is jewish because her mother was, but not because she practices it.
     Mom said we could believe any religion we wanted, but I think that mostly religion is just a way for people to control other people with things they dont understand. I have been to christian church and synogoge too with friends, but mostly churches feel like you have to believe or else and I want to be able to explore more. Mom wouldnt let me go to scientology church. She said I could after I turned 18 if I wanted. I'll be 18 in 5 weeks now, but I think she didnt really want me to. She said that there were some problems right now and it wasnt going right, but her and other people were working on it. I'm real curious to see, but I know that if they tried to get me to follow their rules, there would be problems. I dont understand how people who can see other peoples spirit and invisible pictures, could not fix their problems, but I am learning that there is a lot I am clueless about. So thats what I know about scientology, some really cool, some I dont like at all.