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BalkanBoy
Heheh :), ok Elena - so what would it take to stop the conversation then? Should I admit guilt - ok - I admit it :). I think at this point you are so resigned to the fact that I need "help" - there's probably little I can say or do, to persuade you otherwise.
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There is one nagging thing that bothers me though - which I can't prove to myself of course - what are you actually afraid of here?
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Why the heated debate? There is a premise to your antagonism - do you want to share it?
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Maybe then we can begin to truly understand each other without all the negativism :).
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Thanks for your comments, I appreciate them.
Martin
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elenaQuote
BalkanBoy
Heheh :), ok Elena - so what would it take to stop the conversation then? Should I admit guilt - ok - I admit it :). I think at this point you are so resigned to the fact that I need "help" - there's probably little I can say or do, to persuade you otherwise.
Not so. Not likely, in any case. I don't imagine you'll have much of a clue till you rack up a lot of disappointing relationships and begin to question the exploitive dogma and fake intimacy of Landmark. You may "believe" you are "communicating" with people in some superior way, but that is a delusion that you, probably, will only find out after many sad encounters and disasterous involvements. It's hard to reach anyone while they are in, what cult-watchers call, "thrall." When people are "high" or "buzzed" from the emotional "intoxicants" they don't much care what us sober party-poopers have to say. So, no.....I don't think you'll be in a position to cure yourself, with or without "help," of a cult-designed and imposed mental illness until you've suffered the "hang-over" for a good long time.Quote
There is one nagging thing that bothers me though - which I can't prove to myself of course - what are you actually afraid of here?
That more and more "normal," decent, honest, intelligent people will be suckered into a predatory and exploitive mind-set, a damaging and digusting world-view, and a devastating psycho/intellectual/emotional racket like Landmark and/or all the other copy-cat groups. It's astonishingly easy for these scammers to fool lots and lots of people. Remember, they target the suggestible, the malleable, those easily led or seduced, the cooperative and eager to get along, the self-sacrificing - on the whole, pretty nice people who, mostly, don't deserve to be tricked, used, lied-to, fooled, and taken advantage of.
And, that you, and others like you, will spread the noxious, infectious, and poisonous "thought-virus" farther and deeper into the culture. Answer me this: Why are you, specifically, so anxious, eager, and willing to use their jargon, their "concepts," and their "position?"Quote
Why the heated debate? There is a premise to your antagonism - do you want to share it?
You'll figure it out sooner or later.Quote
Maybe then we can begin to truly understand each other without all the negativism :).
Not likely while you're pushing and/or posturing Landmark-style. And don't be fooled into thinking you can get away with it if you jettison the jargon. It's still easily recognized by anyone with a prior "exposure."Quote
Thanks for your comments, I appreciate them.
Martin
You're welcome,
Ellen
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BalkanBoy
.........and I've had my sense of good honest humor surgically removed from me long time ago (maybe that's why my wife hates it too ;).Quote
BalkanBoy
BalkanBoy:
Maybe your wife would glean some value from the section on "Abusive and Controlling Relationships"?
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BalkanBoy
Elena - I picked up the Landmark 'jargon' while looking for cult news. This site is one of the most informative ones on the issues and so I thought I'd play a practical joke by provoking people into thinking I've been at the Landmark forum :). So now you know - I have not been to it - but I enjoyed the response I squeezed out of getting people to think that I could've been in it. It was interesting to see the responses actually :). There is a lot of hostility toward Landmark - and I don't know whether their intentions are cruel or honest - only what I read here. I actually have no idea what 'enrollment' means :), or that it was used at the "forum" (or what have you) but I gathered as much to know that it means some sort of subtle propaganda
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BalkanBoy
I have to make some distinctions before we move on:
So your _story_ about stepping in dog poop (an actual physical event) is one filled with disgust, based on "trauma" (mom/dad reprimanding you for stepping in it), and you _decide_/_choose_/_elect_/what have you the _EXPERIENCE_ is now _bad_, without ever knowing so.
I know, I'd do the same if I wasn't aware of the distinction. The forum shakes you up in a way that you make the distinction. Whether you can handle it or not, is, yes, as Margaret Singer said - _potentially unsafe/dangerous_. I think I handled it and got "something out of it".
the 'blueprint' of who we are:
Def #3: "feeling the need to know" - a story/decision we made up about Def #1 & Def #2 based on past stories/decisions/traumas.
It's not complex at all - it's about making the distinction. So when those bad forum people told you you did not get "it" , I guess what they mean is you don't get the distinction.
Granted, a lot of them will blabber about other things, and what those things will be is a reflection of their pasts/traumas/decisions etc - which may or may not differ from ours - as they say in the cyber world - YMMV - your mileage may very. And some do continue to seek support where support can not be found - by purchasing the Advanced courses and paying out money to Landmark by the dozens, much like you are paying money to anything else at your own free will, but since we're so bound by material crap, we think we get something out of paying for it, whereas with the forum, based on our prior fears/pasts/decisions/traumas/defensive mechanisms, we label it "brainwashing", etc.
Well guess what - I got brainwashed by my parents to think going to school is good.
I do not blame you. I just want you to realize that that is who we/you/are. Or at least HOPE to realize that that is who we are - a semantics-adding, bitching/complaining, walking machine - and we defend against everything and everyone when we're 30, and yet at age 3 or 4 or 5 you think that maybe you could even swim across the Atlantic - because you learned how to swim in the shallow waters... right?
Do you get "it" or no? :) Not to sound like a forum junkie - but I was wide awake while it was going on - no one hypnotized me. As you've certainly read and know :) - you can not
be hypnotized against your conscious will, right?
Ok - mark my words on this one - no one but yourself can convince yourself into anything. Just remember that from now on.
Thanks for having a dialogue and not calling me a freak.
Martin