@ajinajan - It is something of a 'new' strategy and I know this from having been part of this. They call it the 'reinvention of the enterprise'. It is new strategies for what the top people have decided landmark is now about and how they go about getting the world to buy into that. There is a whole document(s) about what landmark now stands for, 'the business [they] are in' and what 'the enterprise' is about.

Landmark realized that the hard sell was putting people off and giving them a bad reputation, so they decided to soften things up. Now, for example, when people go to a Tuesday night evening session for the Forum (the night when people bring guests at the end of their forum aka completion/'graduation') everyone stays in the room for the whole evening instead of guests going into separate rooms for an introduction. This is because going into a separate room scared guests off (because it was weird and creepy) and resulted in fewer registrations.

They tell people not to use the word "graduation" anymore because they know that guests coming to what they think is a 'graduation' are put off and sometimes left feeling conned when they realize it is not a graduation at all.

They also have more special and home introductions. E.g. Someone will do a 'special introduction to the landmark forum for business people' - and then an introduction leader will lead a regular landmark introduction to business people, trying to make them believe that doing the forum will be good for their business. They are doing more targetting of special interest groups, and these events tend to be pretty effective especially the ones where a landmark forum leader leads the event. For example, larry pearson does a special introduction to the black community every so often.

In the 'reinvention of the enterprise' document, there is something about how landmark can work for everybody, no matter what their issue is, no matter what their concern or area of interest is: family, business, love, etc. These deluded souls actually believe that they can solve *anything* in the entire world, and that whatever they do will leave people with "more power, freedom, self expression and peace of mind". Since landmark believes that "you are your word" they think that what they are doing good simply because they SAY so. Hence, very few pay attention to what landmark actually *does* in practice, but rather what landmark says - and what they say to themselves about what they are about, and what they 'stand' for sounds wonderful. It just is not true in reality.

@Billy77 - How they get people working for them for free (I did it myself for a number of years) is that they tell you that they are about transformation, and they want to leave everyone with 'power, freedom, self expression and peace of mind'. They feed people with their PR which people buy.

In the forum itself, the 'technology' and 'distinctions' they give are there to:
a) make you stop thinking (e.g. they tell you to stop listening to the 'little voice in your head'),
b) make you question yourself through telling you over and over again that you are a 'racket strongsuit meaning making machine' and saying things in other courses such as 'you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground', and in the forum putting down everything you do to either a "racket" or a "strongsuit",
c) make you believe that everything you think or feel is a 'story' or an issue that you created so that you could be 'right' and 'make others wrong' and that there is 'nothing wrong here' and that anything you think is wrong is down to you, and that you must be responsible for everything in the universe. Of course, this means then that should you ever have any concerns about landmark itself, it is not landmark that is the problem, but you and your story/racket/strong suit/not wanting to be responsible/lack of integrity and so on and so forth. The whole thing is just a set up for you to become their slave and to never question them because they have already implanted the mechanism to stop you from doing so.


They say things like 'what you resist persists' - which is actually bullshit if you take the time to think about that phrase for a second. What they are really telling you is if you 'resist' landmark then they will persist so what you should do is give in to them.

They say that 'understanding is the booby prize'. I was told many times by staff members to "stop trying to figure it all out". They say that all thoughts/feelings are are neurons in your brain firing - so they don't matter. They tell you directly not to listen to your thoughts and feelings. One of the scariest things for me was hearing leaders talking about wanting to "kill it" - "it" being your mind/self. I left landmark feeling in danger for my life because this word "kill" was used much more than I would care to hear. And knowing that someone wants to "kill" your mind (which is you) is frightening to say the least

Pretty much, everything there is geared towards you not thinking for yourself, doubting your own judgement, questioning your own self and thought processes, ignoring your feelings, and blaming yourself for anything you do think/feel. It is scary stuff.

Without the capacity to think effectively added to the hype and spin and PR that they tell you they are about, this is what gets people working for free. Those people believe in what landmark is saying. They believe that landmark is being genuine. And they have been programmed to ignore any thoughts or feelings to the contrary.

The higher up the landmark food chain you go, the more you have to read and recite these internal documents. In some of the volunteer teams/groups, you even have phone calls of up to 1 hour which are dedicated to picking apart these documents and saying what you like about them, and what you 'get' from reading them. In some of the volunteer teams, you have to select a paragraph or line from these documents and practice it in your life for a week. They also give you 'homework' which consists of an area of the document that they have selected for you and, with your "buddy" (someone you have been paired up with to carry out assignments - and really to spy on each other), you read it out loud and reflect on it, and tell each other what it means for you and how you will put it into effect in your life.

If you are in the introduction leaders programme (ilp), every time you go to spend 4 hours making phone calls, you have to read through a document before you start. Then you choose one part of the document that will be your 'stand' for the time you are there. One of these areas on the document is about being a representative for landmark education and making the forum available to people. They call this something like 'a future of extraordinary accomplishment'. I cannot remember accurately right now. That's more indoctrination.

They tell you that you will be 'confronted' by doing some of the more intense volunteer stuff (like the ILP), and that they have designed the programme to be 'confronting'. They make you think that being 'confronted' is a good thing. So, when all of the feelings start to arise where you know that something is wrong and you don't feel right, your mind will say 'well, they did say it would be confronting'. These people are highly sophisticated and have designed landmark so they have an answer and solution to every and anything that might come up.

As I write this, I can't believe that I was part of what is so obviously indoctrination of the highest order. This is just a small aspect of it.

I found an interesting document online today. It is a 16 page leaflet written by werner erhard about EST. It may be triggering for some people because it is loaded with jargon. But it IS landmark. It tells you how and why he created some of the courses, and is suprisingly in depth and frightening too. Werner Erhard is not a mentally stable person - it is clear from reading this. [www.erhardseminarstraining.com]

I know a whole lot about landmark. I was in there intensively for a few years... I'm beyond happy that I got out. Never met more wicked people in my life. The problem is that they have been brainwashed into believing that they are doing good.

I read it all with interest newfuture.

Really what they are trying to do is kill people as they know themselves. That is the harsh reality of it.

You are going there innocently and they are trying to take you down and so they can create something that gets put in place of what you were.

They don't care a damn about you, about your thoughts, feelings, soul intelligence. They just want a body and so they can host it with their program.

I wish their was another way of looking at it and so it doesn't seem so bad but I'm really struggling to see what else these groups do.

@billy77 - You are right.

I was thinking today after writing my earlier post about where it is that they hook people. I realized that it is right from the beginning with the word 'distinction'. They tell you that a distinction is bringing something to the foreground. They then talk about your 'blind spots' and how there is an area in your life that you 'don't know that you don't know' that is having an impact on you. They also say that doctors have their own distinctions, e.g. while we use the word 'cancer' a doctor will call it by its medical name. So, from the beginning they have set you up to absorb these 'distinctions'.

However, what these 'disctinctions' are is nothing but a total redefinition of life. When they say they are going to give you 'distinctions' what they are actually doing is giving you redefinitions.

1) Look at this word 'racket'. They define racket as a 'persistent complaint with a fixed way of being' - which is a hard enough concept to wrap your head around in the first place (what does it mean to have a 'fixed way of being'? Who in fact, apart from a rigid inflexible mind have a 'fixed way of being'? what is a 'way of being' anyway - does it mean an attitude? Or a way you act? or what?). The 'leader' then guides you to what this could be. For example they will say "my mother is a nag" is a racket. YET, your mother may actually nag you from time to time. Saying this does not make this a 'persistent complaint' - it might be an observation. It could be a feeling. It could be a complaint, yes. But so what if it is? If your mother is nagging you then she is nagging you no? It could be something that just irritates you from time to time. This does not mean that you believe that your mother is ALWAYS and FOREVER a nag, or that she is 'persistently' nagging you. But if "my mother is a nag" is a persistent complaint, then so is "the sky is grey". So is "my sister has a lot to say". So is "I am overweight". So is "I don't like the rain today". Going on that way, you can easily define much of what most people say as a 'racket' when you consider how much of our lives is spent talking about our observations of life. So with this disctinction they have redefined ordinary thoughts/feelings/observations/perspectives and lumped into "racket'".

2) Look at the word 'strong suit', the 'distinction' "strong suit". They first ask what 3 things people would say about you that make you successful. Someone's might be 'funny'. They then say that a 'strong suit' makes you successful, but it also makes you fail in life. Well, isn't a 'strong suit' mostly going to be someone's personality? If you say "X is a great, funny, intelligent person" in landmark terms, all of that is a 'strong suit'. This then means that every single person's personality on earth is merely a 'strong suit'. They then go on to say that this was 'constructed' as a response to failurs in your life. So one day something happened to you and you decided you had to be funny to compensate for this apparent failure. So, they have redefined personality, even character, to be "strong suit" which is a response to failure.

Going on, they go into an exercise where they then tell you how exactly you "constructed" your identity. They say that
aged between 5-10, 10-16 and 16-21 (I can't remember the exact ages) something happened to you and you decided 1) you are alone, b) there is something wrong here and c) I don't belong. They even do an equation x+xy+xyz = your 'identity'.

So here your entire personality has been reduced to a strong suit and this 'i'm alone, there's something wrong, i don't belong'.

I could go on and on and on. I write all of this because I want other people who stop by this site, who are trying to unravel their minds to understand exactly what it is landmark does.

They take life, and reduce it - by redefining your understanding of your self, your thoughts, feelings, observations and basically what it is to be human - to these silly words, which they make you believe are ACTUAL terms. In every day life, observations and saying what you feel is not a problem per se. In landmark, an observation and saying how you feel is now = racket.

Each redefinition in itself is contradictory, and filled with words that often don't make sense in the same sentence. "already always listening". What on earth does that mean? Your brain has to work to even get your head around it. But you can say that it's thoughts/perceptions/values/principles/anything from your life that lives in your head. In ways, the 'already always listening' is yourself. But your ideas/principles etc in landmark are now a problem - they cause issues in your life. WHICH for some people - e.g. a racist/someone sexist/misogynist/anyone with a warped belief system - could be true. But NOT for every person on the planet.

It is not surprise that by the end of the 3 days so many people have bought into it - because landmark has redefined what it is to be alive, telling you that everything about is, by their own 'distinctions' is wrong and f-d up, and coming from failure. If you accept their definitions, then it makes sense that you would see yourself as a 'racket strong suit meaning making machine' since they have reduced life down to these things for you.

The aim is yes to kill people as they know themselves. And after that, there is nowhere to turn... except MORE COURSES. Even if you want to invent a new 'possibility' to live by - how do you know that possibility is not your racket/strong suit/already always listening/story/meaning etc? See how this head f*ck works?!!!

In my life I never came across anything that disturbed me or riled me like this ISA organisation did.

I want them all shutting down. Landmark, ISA, Lifespring, all the clones, all of them. I want everyone to "wake up" as they put it and realise what these things are.

It is againist humanity something like this. In operation just to serve a few egos at the top. This is how Hitler and every other dictator operated.

They are always hierachical these organisations. No one can ever challenge the leader on any level.

All the time they justify everything with their circular logic and bunch of bullshit in their fascist way.

They use a person's deceny and willingness against them.

Absolutely their aim is to destroy your mind as you knew it. I don't care that they think that their intention is to improve your life. Most people's lives don't need improving like this. They use this whole system of re-definition like you have mentioned to cause you to feel insecure.

A lot of people will just be so confused and worn out by having this crap thrown at them in such a confrontational way that their minds will cave in and accept it. They wear down your defences constantly while you are there.

They lack respect for human beings on a basic level.

A bit more background information on Steven Zaffron aka Stephen Robert Zaffron :

STEVEN ZAFFRON WAS CONVICTED OF MAIL FRAUD PER WERNER ERHARD BIOGRAPHY OUTRAGEOUS BETRAYAL:

Steven Zaffron = convicted of Mail Fraud in 1982.

Steven Zaffron = served Werner Erhard as an Est Trainer in Erhard Seminars Training EST.

Steven Zaffron = current CEO of Vanto Group formerly known as Landmark Education Business Development (LEBD).

Steven Zaffron = current Landmark Forum Leader = highest level rank in Landmark Forum aka Landmark Education aka Landmark Worldwide.

Steven Zaffron = given “lifetime” designation to perform “transformation” work for Werner Erhard forever.

Steven Zaffron = member of the Board of Directors of Landmark and senior executive at Landmark Education aka Landmark Forum aka Landmark Worldwide = helped design the Landmark Forum course itself.

Steven Zaffron = continues to work with Werner Erhard while working at Landmark Education aka Landmark Forum aka Landmark Worldwide and while working as CEO of Vanto Group formerly known as Landmark Education Business Development.

From the book Outrageous Betrayal as quoted at:

“[...] Another one of Erhard's new executives was an est trainer named Steven Zaffron […] Three years after first joining Erhard's staff in 1979, Zaffron had been indicted on mail fraud charges for participating in a scam to collect phony unemployment checks. Zaffron was placed on three years' probation [...] Zaffron [...] agreed to a plea bargain [...] shortly before Erhard conferred on him the coveted 'lifetime' designation to do Werner's transformational work [...]”

Pressman, Steven, Outrageous Betrayal: The dark journey of Werner Erhard from est to exile. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993. ISBN 0-312-09296-2 , pg. 217.

CONFIRMED ACCURATE INFORMATION PER 1982 ASSOCIATED PRESS ARTICLE:

“San Francisco (AP) – A man whom prosecutors say masterminded scheme that bilked 13 states out of more than $400,000 in unemployment benefits was sentenced Monday to four years in federal prison for mail fraud.

U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson imposed the sentence on David Adams Muncaster, 50, of Fairfax, who pleaded guilty June 7 to two of 41 counts against him. Three other people also were sentenced after having pleaded guilty to one count each.

Rosalyn Linda Bonas, 40, who lived with Muncaster, was sentenced to 179 days in jail, with the rest of her three-year sentence suspended. Muncaster's former wife, Joan Loretta Sontag, 39, of South Lake Tahoe, drew a three-month term with the rest of her two-year sentence suspended.

Stephen Robert Zaffron, 38, was given a one-year suspended sentence with three years probation.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Ben Burch said the fraud allowed the four to “take extended vacations and live in luxurious surroundings.”

The complaint, covering activities in 13 states and a period of time from November 1975 to November 1981, said Muncaster set up tax accounts for at least 10 fictitious employers in the various states, using private mail drops throughout the San Francisco Bay area.

Then, the government said, he and the others, using false names, applied for Social Security numbers and used them in filing fraudulent interstate unemployment insurance benefits claims at 19 California Employment Development Department offices in the San Francisco area.

Muncaster and the others would appear at these offices saying they were former out-of-state employees of the fictitious companies who had moved to California to look for work.

California would process the claims and forward them to the states where wages were supposedly earned. These states would verify claims by writing to the fictitious employers' Bay area offices.

Muncaster and the others would verify their own claims and states sent out more than 2,000 checks to the various addresses.

B. M. McClanahan, postal inspector in charge, said the defendants rented 22 post office boxes at various places, established mail receiving service at 37 Bay area mail drops, obtained more than 90 fraudulent Social Security cards and opened about 60 bank accounts for benefits paid on 130 unemployment claims.

The states involved were New Jersey, New York, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Michigan, Connecticut, Vermont, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Delaware, Wisconsin, Ohio, and Hawaii plus the District of Columbia.

California has filed a civil suit on behalf of the other states seeking to recover some of the lost funds.”

Associated Press. San Francisco. Four-year sentence given in 13-state mail fraud case. September 16, 1982. Nashua Telegraph. Page 15.

[news.google.com]

“Mr Zaffron is described in the book's executive summary as "a senior executive and board member with Landmark Education, where he spear-headed the design of the Landmark Forum".”

Baker, Richard; and Nick McKenzie. (August 30, 2011) Department chops $80,000 'charisma' seminar Landmark Education and its offshoots have attracted global controversy for their group training programs. The Age, Australia.

STEPHEN ROBERT ZAFFRON AKA STEVEN ZAFFRON MAINTAINED HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH WERNER ERHARD FOR DECADES, AUTHORING A PAPER WITH HIM AND MICHAEL C. JENSEN ON “INTEGRITY” IN 2009:

Erhard, Werner and Jensen, Michael C. and Zaffron, Steve, Integrity: A Positive Model that Incorporates the Normative Phenomena of Morality, Ethics and Legality (March 23, 2009). Harvard Business School NOM Working Paper No. 06-11; Barbados Group Working Paper No. 06-03; Simon School Working Paper No. FR 08-05. Available at SSRN: [ssrn.com] or [dx.doi.org]

NOTE THAT AT THIS TIME, STEVEN ZAFRON WAS ASSOCIATED WITH WERNER ERHARD RELATED COMPANIES LANDMARK EDUCATION AKA LANDMARK WORLDWIDE AND ALSO VANTO GROUP, FORMER KNOWN AS LANDMARK EDUCATION BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT (LEBD), FORMERLY KNOWN AS TRANSFORMATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES.

Landmark Education Business Development aka LEBD aka Vanto Group has as its CEO Steven Zaffron.

Zaffron first became an executive for Werner Erhard and was an “est trainer” in Erhard’s company “Erhard Seminars Training” (Outrageous Betrayal by Steven Pressman, St. Martin’s Press: 1993, page 217).

Currently, Zaffron serves the Landmark Education corporation as CEO of “Vanto Group”, formerly known as “Landmark Education Business Development”, and in addition, Zaffron has the highest-ranking “trainer” title in Landmark Education called “Landmark Forum Leader”.

Interestingly, in a publication by Steven Zaffron as its author, “The Promise of Philosophy and the Landmark Forum”, Contemporary Philosophy, Vol. XXIII, No. 1 & 2, Jan/Feb & Mar/Apr 2001 Barbados Group Working Paper No. 01-01. -- Steven Zaffron acknowledges Landmark Education is a form of " Large Group Awareness Training " or LGAT. In this paper co-authored by Zaffron, the phrase “Large Group Awareness Training” is used multiple times in reference to Landmark Education. Example on page 52: “Dennison’s dissertation,7 which categorizes the Landmark Forum as a “large group awareness training” is a qualitative study based on interviews with Forum graduates. He also reports predominantly positive outcomes and in addition, briefly summarizes philosophical components of the Forum. The extensive research literature on “large group awareness training” published in the 1970s and 80s (summarized in Finkelstein, Wenegrat, and Yalom8) is framed in psychological more than philosophical terms, albeit there is some reference to the training as existential psychotherapy.” Two different academic treatises are cited as references in the paper co-authored by Zaffron (see page 59, endnotes 7 and 8, Dennison 1994 and Finkelstein 1982) – and both have the phrase “Large Group Awareness Training” in their titles.

RADARIS INFO ON STEVEN ZAFFRON CONFIRMS HIS INVOLVEMENT WITH TWO WERNER ERHARD RELATED COMPANIES – TEKNIKO LICENSING CORPORATION AND LANDMARK FORUM AKA LANDMARK EDUCATION AKA LANDMARK WORLDWIDE:

Radaris
[radaris.com]

ORGANIZATIONS

Name / Title
Company / Classification
Phones & Addresses

Steven Zaffron
Director
Tekniko Licensing Corporation
1945 N Carson St, Carson City, NV 89701
353 Sacramento St, San Francisco, CA 94111

Steven Zaffron
Manager
LANDMARK WORLDWIDE, LLC
2390 E Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85016
1209 Orange St, Wilmington, DE 19801
353 Sacramento St #200, San Francisco, CA 94111