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Loela
It is such a relief to have found this website! I just found it today. Briefly, I've completed all the Landmark courses.

One of the main reasons I decided it was no longer for me is because of the tremendous pressure LF puts on it's participants to invite folks to events. They say if you can get people to attend you're "getting it." Friends and coworkers began to get tired of invitations and it was affecting my relationships. No matter what they say, LF folks DO have an agenda. Invite invite invite. Free marketing for LF!! What a deal. :

I could never understand fully why so many people go through so much training before they realize their mind have been captured and deceived by the paradoxical and manipulative rhetoric from Landmark. For example, they will tell you that this critic of yours is because you are now "running a racket" and that "you did not get it"! What is your answer to that type of logic where no matter what you do or say, you are always made wrong? This is the game they are playing. And this kind of paradoxical logic creates a great discomfort into the mind of participants that keeps them addicted to the neverending training. Can you tell us how you were personnaly able to escape this state of dissonance?

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Loela
And why do you need her in/around your group... or do you?

She's a great singer, ideally suited to the role she plays in my group. It would not be easy to replace her with someone else just as good.

Hi concernedfriend,

I think that she will have eased off on you since you already have been through Lifespring which is pretty much the same as Landmark has to offer. Since she is now employed by Landmark she will have gone through most of her possible recruits on her list. Even Landmark people know when it is time to stop.

If you have been manipulated by one group and seen the truth about that it is probable that landmark staffers has told her to stop trying to recruit you and now she is more a part of the machinery to bring in "fresh meat".

I am talking from my own experience. After a while they wanted you to do the behind the scenes work and not do as much direct recruiting. You will then be the coach for newbies so that they can get as many people in as possible.

While on the IFL (introduction to the forum leader course (six months long) ) you write down a list of 100 names and try to get these people to enroll. Landmark don't care what these 100 persons think of you. They will coach you to try enrolling them until those people are either enrolled or disgusted of you. So after that they know you are pretty disgusted with enrolling your friends so you start to lead the small introductions as an Introduction Leader. You carrot is now becoming a seminar leader that will stand on stage and "transform" people.

To become a leader that gets on stage to lead courses you have to suffer through years of more transformation until you are a clone of Werner Erhard - aka Jack Rosenberg - the "inventor" of the courses.

It is good that she still sings in your group. That way she is not spending all her time with landmark. On thing you could ask her if she thinks there is a good balance of the time she spends "doing" landmark and her "normal" life. Usually landmark will occupy A LOT of your time when you have become an employee.

Please read my other posts if you want.

nettie

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Loela
If you don't want to go then follow your heart and don't feel bad about saying no. Only she can save herself.

in contrast to this, I feel I did not do enough to help out my sister after she took Landmark. if I had to do over again, I would have taken the bus to NYC to speak with her a day or so after she had completed the basic course and came out of it spouting mechanical doll platitudes.

very different situation to the one with the band. still, the fact remains. I might have done a lot more than I did, rather than simply accepting that I could do nothing.

though I don't think my words would have affected her, in and of themselves, my having decided to go to NYC to try to do what I could for her would have sent a message, I know, that I felt concerned to drop my life for a few days and go to NYC on her behalf.

Acid Reindeer, what happened with your sister, and have you learned to accept what did happen? [/size:400d06ab38]

Sometimes no matter what you do, the person you are concerned about has to have the experience, regardless of what that experience might be. I have had to learn that as a mother of a 19 year old son. I could share all the pearls of wisdom I have and in the end, it would be for naught. All I can do is step back and watch it happen. [u:400d06ab38]That[/u:400d06ab38] is one of the most difficult parts of parenting. The same would be true for a sister or friend... would it not?

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For example, they will tell you that this critic of yours is because you are now "running a racket" and that "you did not get it"!

Oh my god. "running a racket" brought chills to my spine. We are all human beings therefore we are subject to our whims of the day, etc. In my case I had just left a somewhat decent marriage (in 2001) because I had never learned how to be on my own. I chose to conquer my biggest fear... life on my own, alone. Our son was 15 at the time and long story short, I felt guilty. I then met a man who's stepdad was a Forum leader. He re-awakened me to the joys of sex. I wanted him to like me more so when he suggested the forum (to 'fix' me) of course I said "YES!" And of course the relationship didn't last. However, because of LE I have been able to create and new and surprisingly good relationship with my former husband, and that's a good thing.

All former LE folks have a story to tell. My healing involved forgiving myself for a lot of things. At the time I took the forum (3 months after leaving my former husband) it seemed to be just what I needed...but I didn't understand how emotionally vulnerable I was at the time. Cults tend to attract people who are looking for something. I've noticed that I'm no longer attracted to needy people (like I was) or people I can 'fix.' Since 2001 I have become fiercely independent. I bought my own first home, bought a new car, got a new job, joined a new church, started some new hobbies, etc. It feels like there are endless possibilities and I no longer fear outcomes or the unknown. Yep, I was afraid of what I didn't know I didn't know.

This acknowledgement is the sort of thing I am grateful for when it comes to LE. There are still several things I am pissed off about LE too. In the end, once I 'found myself' I no longer felt I needed to ride that LE merry-go-round.

So thank you. It's great to read everyone's posts here. I still think about LE. It's just nice to know you're all out there willing to talk about your lives. It really is about communication and understanding. It's about taking risks too. So thanks for reading, being here, and listening.

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Loela
All former LE folks have a story to tell. My healing involved forgiving myself for a lot of things. At the time I took the forum (3 months after leaving my former husband) it seemed to be just what I needed...but I didn't understand how emotionally vulnerable I was at the time. Cults tend to attract people who are looking for something. I've noticed that I'm no longer attracted to needy people (like I was) or people I can 'fix.' Since 2001 I have become fiercely independent. I bought my own first home, bought a new car, got a new job, joined a new church, started some new hobbies, etc. It feels like there are endless possibilities and I no longer fear outcomes or the unknown. Yep, I was afraid of what I didn't know I didn't know.

This acknowledgement is the sort of thing I am grateful for when it comes to LE. There are still several things I am pissed off about LE too. In the end, once I 'found myself' I no longer felt I needed to ride that LE merry-go-round.

So thank you. It's great to read everyone's posts here. I still think about LE. It's just nice to know you're all out there willing to talk about your lives. It really is about communication and understanding. It's about taking risks too. So thanks for reading, being here, and listening.

I don't believe that broken relationships and becoming independant are real breakthroughs in life. In my opinion, LE encourages individuality and narcisism as moral values. This is what has been described as "The Malaise of Modernity" (Charles Taylor).

It looks to me as if you are trying to "touch, move and inspire" people to attend the LE Forum! Definitely, the LE enrolling technology is becoming more and more subtle everyday. I'm not going to fall for any of this. This is Landmark at work again. Either you don't see it or your part of it (will you tell us the truth?). In either way, they got you. Sorry.

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Loela
Acid Reindeer, what happened with your sister, and have you learned to accept what did happen?

in early 2004 she decided on a course of action that really hurt me, in concert with other family members who had all done Landmark, est and/or the Forum (my mother and uncle had taken the Forum via their respective work and my other uncle had participated in est/Forum/Landmark in a big way, from 1975-95; he had convinced his wife to take Landmark, relatively recently).

I told her that I did not want to have anything to do with her until or unless I had forgiven her. the uncle heavily into Landmark I dropped all contact with, for the sake of my own sanity.

in the mean time she took various Landmark courses with her then-boyfriend, who had convinced her to take the Basic and Advanced Courses, in an effort to save their relationship. I also suspect that they may have taken courses specifically designed for couples. they split up and her boyfriend took revenge by revealing intimacies about their life together in a magazine article, without even changing her name in the article to protect her privacy. (he did, however, not mention Landmark in the article.) after I found about this, I phoned up my sister and said that I forgave her. I just had wanted to say that I felt sorry about had happened with her boyfriend.

more recently, we continue to have a strained relationship. I called her up about another revelation that I found out about her, while going through a hard time myself. I ended up dumping on her.

she told me that she no longer takes the courses and she does seem more like her old self. we have hardly any contact so I don't know if she comes out with the Landmarkisms like "he chose that [way of life]" reaction to a homeless man we saw. (we met back, when, around New Year's?)

she does seem genuinely happier and more mature. she told me that she had given up her wish to have anything more than a mediocore life. whether you consider that all right or not depends on your point of view. I don't know whether to think of that as tragic or a sensible choice or both.

as far as my family in general, my trust in them took a big hit.

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Sometimes no matter what you do, the person you are concerned about has to have the experience, regardless of what that experience might be. I have had to learn that as a mother of a 19 year old son. I could share all the pearls of wisdom I have and in the end, it would be for naught. All I can do is step back and watch it happen. [u:c6d88cca55]That[/u:c6d88cca55] is one of the most difficult parts of parenting. The same would be true for a sister or friend... would it not?

it seems we have two different ways of looking at the world.

I don't accept that anything "has" to happen. the sister of my father's second wife died by drowning, at a young age. if someone learned a lesson there, they payed a really steep price for the tuition.

and her sister didn't learn any lesson at all.

recently I hung out at the place where a friend lives. she had a mutual friend, an alcoholic over. he had a forty ounce there on the table. now, I could have taken the liquor, poured it down the drain and said, "you want to quit the alcohol? start now!" would have made me really unpopular, though, quite probably. so I didn't do that and one of the rationalizations that passed through my mind had to do with, That wouldn't cure him, but again, it mainly had to do with the risk to me.

or I suppose I could have said, He needs to learn that lesson. not sure what lesson he'll learn, though.

basically, a lot of the talk about "learning lessons" and "being judmental" comes from social cowardice. I suppose if you really piss off people at way they will at least see what values you happen to have.

in the end, my actions may not have made any difference, but they may have, and now I'll never know.

part of it had to do with the fact that ISTR, she changed a little when she took the basic course and a lot when she took the advanced.

some of her cousins and I had discussed by e-mail the possiblity of staging an intervention but we all managed to talk each other out of it. still I had felt prepared to draw my brother in, even though we hadn't spoken in nearly twenty years, up until I called him up to ask him what he thought.

actually, as I recall, I think he more or less said, "it's too bad, but she has to go through this..." or words to that effect.

After reading all of the negative comments here, I just wanted to share some positive comments about my own experiences.

I completed the Landmark Forum and a seminar a few years ago and I still value what I learned there.

The way I see it, some people think LME is a "cult" for the same reason that they dislike true Christian churches, because they can't deal with absolutes and with guided life lessons. Many people seem to be too stuck in their ways and too close minded to be willing to see the value of some of the out of the box concepts that Landmark teaches.

Even Landmark's recruiting methods are not as "evil" as they may appear. The way I see it, they are merely viral marketing at its best. I know I would trust a friend more than a complete stranger.

I will add though that it was the hefty price tag on their seminars that forced me to sever my ties with LME. I have also come to the conclusion that a person is far better served by a proper church as LME is nothing but Biblical lessons repackaged into a secular pseudo-science.

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midonov123
I don't believe that broken relationships and becoming independant are real breakthroughs in life.

Loela actually said that she ended her marriage before she took LEC and not after.

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Loela
I then met a man who's stepdad was a Forum leader. He re-awakened me to the joys of sex. I wanted him to like me more so when he suggested the forum (to 'fix' me) of course I said "YES!" And of course the relationship didn't last. However, because of LE I have been able to create and new and surprisingly good relationship with my former husband, and that's a good thing.

I bet Leola will say that the "broken relationship" was NOT because of Landmark, but that the "good relationship" with her former husband IS because of Landmark. Can't you see this is all about "touch, move and inspire" in a very subtle and insidious way? I doubt we will ever hear about Leola again. In this "world of possibilities", there is this "possibility" that this is another "hit and run" by an LE apologist! A very clever one that would be. Will Leola correct me if I'm wrong?