HELP – A REASON TO LIVE

The one thing Scientologists in general are good at is HELPING. The helping of others often leads to a “backflash”, anger and upset from those we are trying help. Understanding this will prevent us from giving up and no longer caring. Don’t! LRH never gave up!

The most fundamental button man has is HELP. And that button which can be most easily tampered with or upset or aberrated in man is help. And you start saying to man, “help,” and man has a variety of reactions. And of course, Dianetics and Scientology are nothing if not help mechanisms.

Help is the button which can be just knocked to pieces or re-established in the individual. That’s a tremendously powerful button.

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Something happens to this one factor in life. A person basically intends to help. The beginning of any difficulty he’s in right now is an effort to help. And also, the only reason he’s alive and happy right now is help. So, help is a two-edged sword, this is a double-sided coin.

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If you think of somebody you hate, you can probably remember a time when you tried to help him, or a man like him. Your hatred actually is based on the fact that you flopped. You failed you and you failed him. When you were a little kid so high you wanted to help Momma and Daddy. Fine, you wanted to help them, you wanted to get a big job. After a while you started getting unreal and exaggerated. You no longer brought Mommy the dishcloth and so forth, you started to get exaggerated. You’d say, “How could I make 800 billion pounds and buy them limousines?” You see, you’re getting desperate by that time. Possibly any of you could remember such a response toward your parents.

And then after a while you decided you couldn’t do a thing about it. And that is the basis of teenage negation of family. The child has decided he can do nothing about it. Now if that child also decides that he cannot help society or any section of it, you have a delinquent on your hands, if the child decides that. He has to know that he can help. And as long as he knows that he can help, he’ll stay in communication and stay right. But when he feels he can no longer help, he starts blowing up. There goes his life.

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Here’s this factor then that as far as one goes in life, is determined apparently by the degree that he feels his activity helps one or another sections of life. And when that poor fellow comes on down to the last dregs of nowhere, he can’t help anybody in the whole world including himself. And he’s a goner. He’s a dead man by that time. I don’t care if he’s still breathing. This man’s dead. It’s all a fellow has to realize totally.

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You are asking straight on top of the basic reason they have for existence. The fellow asks: “Why are we alive?” Apparently, apparently the reason we are alive is to help. I know that’s one of the silly answers. But that’s what life is.
Excerpt from the lecture – LRH, SOME ASPECTS OF HELP 30 JUNE 1960